So right off the bat I bought this amazing R9 in Dec. 2018. According to the tag it was made in June of 2018. Which means it was sitting around the store for 6 months. All through Jan. it played great. Come Feb. I decided to change pickups from CustomBuckers to ThroBak 101s. Great tone, love it..... took off the strings...put the pickups in great.......Then I decided to change p/u rings. to the darker ones.....took off the strings put the rings on........put the strings back on. Saw the rings didn't match the pick guard. Got a darker pickguard. Didn't fit.......Put the original back on and went back to the original p/up rings.. took off the strings...put in the rings....checked intonation was a little off. Bought what OI thought was a Tone Pro TOM. from StewMac......put it on... didn't like the notchs.......put back the Gibson ABR-1.. still wasn't happy. Got a real Tone Pro.........Nice but the E string sounded like a sitar. Put Back the ABR- Intonated it......turned saddles around still a little off.....also had to lower and raise the action several times due to the different bridges. Buzz here....buzz there. ugh........time to go the shop. .....March 28......"sure we'll look at it" Well according to the guy. it looks like it wasn't set up......The neck was out of whack!!!........they worked on it and even put the TonePro in ...no sitar sound. I guess it needed to be lightly filed........sooooooo Got it back last week.....amazing!!! I'm so happy. Now for your opinions.......You know what they say about opinions...........And you know the old joke it takes 10 guitar players to screw in a light bulb,,,,1 to screw it in and 9 that know a better way..........I digress. Did I screw everything up with all of my tweeting and string removing. Or Because the store didn't set it up at time of purchase ( it played great at the time) I even used it at a gig in Dec. the week after I bought it home. Or did Gibson Custom just put it together and not set it up. ( the tag said it was set up to spec) My guy took off the truss rod cover and noticed the nut still had paint on it. It looked like it wasn't touched......Who should I blame. Or should I beat myself up for messing things up. Should have left everything alone.........But as guitar players....are we ever really satisfied?.........For what it's worth. I traded in a 2014 R0 for the 2018 R9..............I love it now...I have 1 guitar and that's all I need. No GAS here.... They did a fine job............Kudos to the Raritan Bay Guitar Repair, Freehold NJ
