Thanks for your comment, Cagey. I may wind up doing just what you say.
FWIW, I've got nothing against having professionals work on my instruments. In fact, I've been doing just that for more than 30 years, from basic repairs and set ups, to new saddles, nuts, bridge pins, swapping out pups, tuners, restoring an old guitar, even had a someone put together a custom build for me from parts I bought here and there. Just handed them all over and said: call me when it's a guitar. Generally speaking, if something needed doing, I had someone else do it.
For me, one of the points of the current build was to try to do as much of it as I could myself. The "heavy lifting" – stuff I knew was out of my league – finishing, wiring – I had done by pros. The rest I thought I'd try my hand at, as much for the experience as for whatever pleasure I could derive from it. Otherwise, frankly, I could've just bought a new guitar and been done with it. Would have been cheaper and a lot faster – I'd have been playing it for 6 weeks by now. :icon_smile: But that's not the same thing, as you know.
Hence my reticence, though again, in the end I may wind up taking it to a local shop and having it done. In fact, gonna call one in about half an hour to see if they can press fit those bridge thimbles for me.
