19.11.2004 12:37 - First, Build Your Guitar
Have patience with me, as I\'m writing this on my father\'s computer with a UK keyboard - German keyboards have the y and z transposed so don\'t be surprised if things get a little strange.
I\'m at my parents house, as you may have gathered from the last paragraph, and as I was flying here rather than using Eurotunnel, I didn\'t bring a guitar for the Wigan do. I\'m glad I didn\'t, as at Cologne/Bonn we were searched and scanned not once, but twice, and both times they wanted me to unpack my rucksack and put the guitar pedals I was carrying through the scanner separately.
Fortunately, I have a guitar here. It\'s an old Encore Strat that I haven\'t really touched since getting the Jap Strat sorted. However, thanks to my discovery of the Rockinger online store, it now has some nice pickups in it and some decent Kluson machineheads.
Fitting these two items wasn\'t easy, however, and a bit of woodwork and soldering was required. The old machineheads were bigger and attached in an (admittedly better) different way to the Klusons. Some widening of holes was required. Fortunately mz Dad\'s garage is well-equipped with a pillar drill. The strat copy bridge that I bought off Ebay has turned out to be complete rubbish, and so won\'t be fitted. It\'s the wrong string-spacing - you name it, everything is wrong. However, that\'s my fault.
Fitting of the pickups has revealed some rather interesting facts about the Encore. For one thing, all pots are 500, instead of 250. I suspect this is because the (cheap) pickups which were fitted are primitive stacked humbuckers. However, the guitar seems to sound OK with the new pickups. Admittedly I haven\'t had the chance to play through a big amp (yet). The wiring was completely back to front, and so I had to totally rewire the guitar, belling though the switch beforehand. I may rewire it according to the alternative wiring plan provided by Rockinger, which gives a master volume and tone, and a blend for the middle pickup. The original shielding I did (using tinfoil!) has been replaced with heavier copper foil.
Right. I\'m now off to try it with a bigger amp, finish packing and check the car over.
