call cards, fret files and a ton of snow...

so its still snowing, we're up to 3 meters but it kinda goes well with the Winter Olympics and Sweden are doing really well across the board.Ironically as I write this on my new Macbook pro the swedes are getting stuffed in the curling by canada.

Down at the only music shop in town today (well, worth going in to!) and I managed to get a loan of some very good japanese fret files. I'd had enough of the brass nut in the latest creation.Using my company cards and a set of verniers, I measured the first fret to string height as 2mm...too much.

Okay, if you get this wrong your basically donald ducked...raising a nut is not an option..so its patience and cunningness like a weasel that works. Carefully I got to work on the nut and taking that 2 mm down to what I felt was acceptable before breaking a sweat. Without readjusting the truss rod (its a Warmoth pro remember, adjuster on the side), I measured the string height after a retune to circa 3mm.Took the saddles down so were down to around 2. something at the 17th fret and then felt that was enough at this time.
Then , the harmonic on the fret12 and fret note on 12 to do the intonation..well, 4 outta 6 needed the saddles pulled back.No real surprise.Its not rocket science and at the same time its probably not what a luthier would be happy with, but good enough for me and a huge difference to what it was before I started.Makes a huge difference to make the effort. Obviously if you start mucking about removing corian nuts for brass (which was glued in a bit too much imo..) then you have to make that extra yard.

I'm really enjoying this guitar despite the fact that its not quite right...like the E's been outta sink with the string lines..but the 16.8k of the DF assists...the magnet could be used as an evil weapon in a spiderman movie..its thats strong! And lets face it, an original Gibson Dirty Finger has form! As mentioned previously, I could stick in a seymour 59 or a special rewound gibson classic 57 which has juice..we shall see.

Next two days will be interesting...