I leveled dressed and polished the frets on my mate's R8 Les Paul for two beers, so I guess I'm a cheap guitar tech?! I had to rebuild a shattered pickup ring on that guitar and replace the output jack. For two Birra Morettis.
The payment, for me, is seeing the pickup bezels sitting correctly on the top of the bass. On the few Darkstar'd Dearmonds I saw kicking around, the corners of these bezels typically sit above the top of the bass. Mine grip the top like a limpet!
I had a job interview a couple of weeks back, and the stress about that manifested itself as me building a pile of prototype pickup bezels and testing every part of their production.
