Okay. I got my guitar back today. And can I say: Wow. It is amazing. It plays like butter and also sounds better too. There is no way I could have done even close to this myself - I mean, I’d already had a crack at a basic setup.
I originally asked for Elixir 10s to go on it, he convinced me that a hybrid set of D’addarios XS would be even better. Equivalent of 9’s in the higher 3 strings for easier bends and 10’s in the lower three strings.
The luthier did a bit more than I expected. Lowered nut slots, truss rod, saddle action, intonation. But he also releveled a few frets he found that weren’t quite perfect - I hadn’t noticed but he did - and he balanced the pickups. He lowered the neck pickup as it was dominating when the switch was in the middle position so neck/bridge were better balanced. He also adjusted the levels of the individual pickup poles so it sounds sweeter when in single coil mode. A bit of a tweak to the tuning pegs as well.
Overall guitar plays amazingly now. His comment was that it would be pretty hard to have any guitar play better than this one does now. Which is how it feels.
Oh, and a funny little nice touch. On the hand written service report he wrote the model as “Teles/Paul”. Which is kinda what my guitar is, a tele les paul. (Here’s the guitar if you haven’t seen it NGD! Fender Telecaster HH)
I know most people are on the other side of the world but here’s his website, the guitar pit stop. He builds instruments as well. https://www.theguitarpitstop.com.au/