Might be a story worth stickin to
I did readjust the truss rod, which was virtually stuck from age, a little naptha and turbine oil, got it loose and wiped off any excess oil (Scott Shop Towels are your friend
. It was a 1/2 turn CW from slack/starting to drag. I went back to the 1/2, + 1/8 slowly, let it sit there without any string tension all day, then retuned in the evening. By golly if it isn't just perfect. Shamefully, I never use feeler gauges to be scientific about this. I just know when there's too much or not enough, and I always eyeball, actual real life measurement should be about .008/.010", not much...
It responded amazingly, flattened the neck out, even in the cowboy chord area, I can feel the difference, ease of playing and intonation are both better now, plays like my D35.
But is sure doesn't sound like a D35.
It's sweeter, maybe a little quieter, but if you dig in to the trebles possibly even louder than the D35 at the same attack level. And man, the bass thump on the low E when fingerpicking is actually impressive enough for me to notice in a most happy way.
Tried to record some, but it was really inspirational... translation some pretty wild playing, too hard. Can you play too hard? And too fast?
I don't remember my '72 D28 ever sending me into headbanging lalalland like these Guilds do, it sounded great but I don't remember ever having a moment like that with it.
Maybe it's me and I'm just more receptive now. I'm not even thinking about playing electric anymore.
If I'd just worked on technique all these years instead of chasing electric tone with pickups, pedals and amps... And in that time I was changing anyway, going from the sound of an SG through a 50 Watt Plexi with a ProCo RAT that had just come out, to eventually in the last year realizing that a Telecaster is like no other, the fundamental tone is so much stronger, even makes a Strat which was my gateway drug to the Telecaster sound wimpy by comparison...
Now I realize the tone I was chasing was the purity of an acoustic, real soundwaves penetrating a room, not the approximation that comes back out of a speaker, tainted by all of those variables like speaker cone material, ground loops, line loss...