RCZ Les Paul Revival

This awesome RCZ custom Les Paul came into my shop early 2021 in rough playing condition. The build was hand-made by a local luthier out of Cleveland around 10-15 or so years ago. The body is made out of a curly Walnut top and what looks to be a light piece of Cherry. The neck is made out of a nice piece of curly birdseye maple with a walnut stripe in between. It also features a highly figured piece of Cocobolo, which is being covered up by years of play (gunk!)

Now, to the problem….. The fretboard was uneven and had a bit of a twist to it. The customer wanted to have the frets level, crowned, and polished, but the twist was too severe to go through with the work. The fretboard needed to be re-leveled and re-radiused with a full refret. The finish of the guitar has also seen better days, showing lots of scratches, glue-up voids and lots of dings and dents.

Let’s dive right in! I started by pulling out the old nickel frets. I used my nifty StewMac “3 Peaks” precision fret pullers which made it a breeze. The frets came out easy with no chips (you love to see it!)

I adjusted the truss rod to attempt to get the neck in a straight enough position to level the board. I want to keep the truss rod at as close to zero as possible to ensure it has enough adjustability either way. I used a 12” radius aluminum sanding beam to start leveling the fretboard.

Sanding….. sanding…. sanding….. It never ends!! The board is almost leveled. Lots of orange dust to vacuum up. This took about 45 mins to level out and radius.

Fully leveled and…..WOW where did that grain come from?! This fretboard really pops now. After level sanding up to 320, I used hand sand paper to sand the board up to 800 grit. This leaves a nice sheen on the board.

The next step was to install some new frets on to the board. The customer and I decided to switch out the medium nickel frets with some stainless steel Jescar jumbo frets. Most of the time, I try and upgrade to SS as they last longer which means less re-frets (score!) I installed them with a little bit of hide glue, leveled, crowned, polished and buffed them up to a nice shine. These feel great!

Originally, this guitar had black plastic covers for the truss rod, switch and control cavities. The customer wanted more “premium” covers, so we decided to design new ones out of 1/4” walnut. These will look a whole lot better than the original black plastic ones! Let’s get to the designs.

The customer designed this triangle truss rod cover, which I feel really looks great with this build. It gives the guitar a unique custom feel. I cut out the shape on my Shapeoko 3 XL CNC machine and added a small bevel to the ends with a 90 degree V-bit. I used the existing screw mounting holes to scale the size and shape. It was easy to precisely drill these on the CNC machine.

After finishing the truss cover, I started designing the switch cavity cover. I used the old cover as a reference and engraved the builder’s name and serial number on the back of the cover (facing inwards.)

I once again used my Shapeoko 3 CNC to cut out the cover and do the engraving. I used a 1/4” endmill to cut out the shape and a 90 degree V-bit to engrave the lettering. Having this CNC machine makes it a breeze to do custom covers and templates.

It fits like a glove!! These look a lot nicer than the standard black plastic covers. It matches the top and the headstock veneer and really brings the build together. The next cover we are going to tackle is the control cavity, let’s get to it!!

We are repeating the same process as before. I designed and cut out this control cavity out of the same 1/4” top as the other covers. I wanted to include the builder’s name and SN on this cover as well for continuity. It’s the little details like this that can take a build to the next level.

It fits perfectly! I am happy we chose to replace the covers. They look 10 times better than the old ones, plus they match the figured walnut top! For all three of these covers, I used a walnut guitar top blank that was not bookmatched. It was the perfect thickness and had some nice random grain to it!

This project is turning into being a full restore! Up next, the neck had a few large glue voids that needed to be filled. The neck was also pretty dinged up, so we decided to refinish it with oil instead of the old (I presume to be) wipe on poly. I sanded down the neck, filled the glue voids and then finish sanded to 600 grit. I also took a bit of wood off the heel for improved playability (the old contour was a bit blocky.)

The finish I chose for this neck is from Crimson Guitars. I used a combination of their Penetrating Guitar Finishing Oil and their High Build Guitar Finishing Oil. Both of these finishes are similar to Tru-Oil, but just a bit different. The way I apply it is to rub it onto the wood with a white Scotch-Brite pad, leave it on for about 5-10 minutes, and then buff off ALL of the excess with a clean cloth. I repeated this process 3 times for each finish (6 coats total.)

I let the finish cure for about a week or two until the smell dissipated. After I knew it was cured, I buffed the neck with some Renaissance Wax to further protect the neck and increase the sheen. This oil and wax really brought out the flame in this maple neck! I really love the wild patten on these neck woods.

I chose the same finish combination for the walnut truss rod, switch and cavity covers. Here is a sample piece I sent to the customer. I repeated the above process to each cover and let them sit until the rest of the work was done.

The last thing on the list before the final setup was to buff the body. I wet-sanded a few spots with 1500 grit sand paper to remove some heavy scratches that were on the gloss poly finish (body and headstock.) After wet-sanding, I buffed the body and headstock with some StewMac Medium and Fine Cut Buffing Compounds. Finally, I finished it off with Meguiar's Mirror Glaze® Swirl Remover.

A quick buff to the body and headstock made all the difference! The finish had a few deep dings I couldn’t address, but overall it looks great for its age. I assembled the guitar, gave it a proper setup and it was finished.