Roger -
Sorry to hear about the job situation on top of the DW situation. Your frustration is understandable, but as many have posted here, this isn't a manufacturing defect - it's just a byproduct of natural materials.
Ebony is used in the fingerboard because it's dense, hard, and has a high internal oil content. No matter how long you season/dry the wood before working with it, the act of carving it into your fingerboard exposes a new surface and that new surface will be more subject to shrinkage and environmental sensitivity than the blank it came from. Alembic is careful to properly maintain optimal humidity in their shop but unless you live in Hawaii or the Phillipines, winter for you or I will be much, much drier. That dry environment causes the fingerboard to shrink, exposing the fret ends. The surface of the tangs of the frets keep the fret ends from pulling back in when the humidity increases during the warmer months. So, you really can expect this to be a one-time fix.
All that said, I would highly recommend you take it to a professional luthier for the fix, despite the good results people report here. First of all, smoothing fret ends will be a no-brainer for anybody qualified. They will have the proper tools and experience. For example, nobody here mentioned masking the fingerboard edges and surface, which I believe would be normal practice for a pro to prevent scratches from stray strokes (hey, you're going to have 48 edges to take down). This is less of a big deal than for fret levelling where the fret tops are in play, but your instrument will allow the rare opportunity for a simple slip to cause literally thousands of dollars of damage - don't let it happen.
There's another reason that you may not really want to think about too much. If you make an error and round off the fret end too much (or irregularly among those 48 fret ends), then this may require replacement of one or more frets. This is already slightly pricey with your garden variety Fender. With a full neck inlay and an LED strip running down the edge of the neck, the simple act of pulling the frets is now a major, major undertaking, and you'll find that many good luthiers will refuse to do the work outright or only at a very great cost.
I have a graphite-necked Series II, just oval inlays, but side LEDs (and no truss rod). When I recently wanted to have a relief adjustment, a number of highly qualified luthiers in SF were unwilling to work on it, on the chance that the relief change I needed was going to require a full refret. I was able to get the work done by my favorite tech after I convinced him to take a good look at it and convince himself that it would only involve milling the frets rather than refretting. It had always had marginal relief from when I picked it up new from the factory in 1987, but it was only a few years ago that I decided to actually get it fixed.
Part of having a sports car is that an oil change that would cost $59 on your Honda will cost $600 on your Ferrari. On some levels that really sucks; on the other hand, you *do* get to drive a Ferrari. In this case, I suspect that Alembic would probably fix the problem if you could get it in their hands, and that it will probably cost more to ship it to them and back than a local repairman would charge to address the problem.
Best of luck,
David Fung
