Re: How long was it until you started messing with guitat tech level stuff?
I've been playing for about three years, and fixing/setting up/modding my own guitars for most of that time. Being an engineer, the impulse to tweak everything comes naturally to me. Like many others, I learned to work on my own stuff mostly because I got tired of paying music store techs good money, only to have them return the guitar playing and sounding worse than when I dropped it off. I can do pretty much everything on my own, even fret and nut work. The only thing I have no experience with is finishing and dealing with catastrophic problems, such as broken necks or headstocks...hopefully I'll never need to know how to fix that. If you just want to learn to do your own setups, buy the Dan Erlewine books mentioned and get yourse;f some simple tools...soldering set, wire strippers, screwdrivers, allen wrenches, etc. If you want to get into nut and fret work, you'll need to invest a fair amount of money in highly specialized tools. But no matter what, never do any major modifications on your favorite guitar until you've practiced on a junker.
Ryan