So I had a fun day. I cleaned off my work bench (no small task), covered a 5' x 2' board with carpet to set on my bench when I want to work on guitars, found a foam block for neck support, then went to work on my firefly. I cleaned the fingerboard with Murphys oil soap (cuz that's what reverb.com suggested and cuz I had some), then I coated it with Roche-Thomas premium fingerboard oil (cuz I had that too). My fingerboard looked really dry and the oil darkened it up and made it look much happier. I popped out the nut following directions on youtube and sanded it down so the string height at the nut was not so ridiculous (it was really high). Then I cleaned everything and put on a set of GHS boomer 10-46s cuz those are my favorites and I have a 6-pack of them. Adjusted the pickup heights and the action. Set the intonation at the 12th fret and the intonation at the 1st and 2nd frets is right on for several strings and still a bit sharp for some. Then I kicked back and jammed for a while. The strings and raising the neck pickup (which was really low initially) made a definite improvement.
So, I had fun doing work on a guitar I have always been afraid to try, and I had fun jamming on my new firefly. I will now order new tuning machines which apparently I can get for about 30 bucks and I think I will order a new nut (<$20) and a set of files (10 or 15 bucks?) to fine tune the new nut. Someday I will probably replace the pickups but I am in no hurry for that cuz it sounds quite good. So I will have less than 200 dollars in this beautiful and very playable guitar, plus I will have some new tools and some experience working on a guitar. Since this guitar thing has become my number one hobby by far, I feel better knowing how to do a few maintenance tasks.
Next question. Can anyone give me advice on how to order the right nut? They are not going to have one listed for the firefly, I will have to select things like neck radius (which I don't know) and other precise measurements (which make me nervous). Any tips? thanks,
jahmer