He did use it though until 1982 when he smashed it against an amp during a concert in the US. He then sent the guitar to John Page, who kept the remains for over 20 years before sending them back to May. Brian didn’t really like it because it didn’t sound like the original one, despite the fact it had the exact same pickups which he kept as spare. Perhaps the best known replica of the Red Special was made by John Birch in 1975 and is know mainly for it’s appearance in the “We Will Rock You” music video. He carries two guitars with him built by Greg Fryer, which are perhaps the most authentic copies, as Fryer had the original Red Special under x-ray in order to gather up as much information on the internal cavities in the body.īrian May now also owns the company that makes and sells Red Special replicas. There were also various replicas of it guitar made from 1975 up until now, and Brian uses them occasionally as backup guitars, or for songs that require different tuning.
The tremolo arm itself was built using a metal piece from a saddle bag carrier from an old bike and a knitting needle from Brian’s mother.īrian used this guitar extensively throughout Queen era. This piece holds the tremolo placed in the semi-circular hole, which also holds two motorbike valve springs to counter the string tension (nice replica of this system can be seen here). The metal piece bolted on the body was built using an old knife-edge shaped into a V. The tremolo piece was also completely hand-built. They are wired in series, but each pickup also has a phase switch which reverses the wiring. The wiring was done in a way that each pickup can be turned on or off individually, which meant that all three of them could be on at the same time or the bridge and the neck pickups could be used together, which is quite unique feature. The guitar was painted with layers of Rustins’ plastic coating which resulted in a dark red color.īrian used three Burns Tri-Sonic pickups which he re-wound with reverse polarity and potted the coils with Araldite epoxy to reduce microphonics. The material for the guitar came from all kinds of sources, including the 18th century fireplace mantel which was used to make the neck, and the piece of the oak table which served as the middle piece of the blockboard semi-hollow body. Home-made guitar build by Brian and his father Harold in the early 1960s. Brian May’s Electric Guitars: Red Special He used that guitar on all of the Queen’s albums, and still uses it to this day. During the years, he tried some other guitars, including a 1978 Fender Telecaster, 1950s Fender Stratocaster and couple of different Gibsons, but he always ended coming back to the old Red Special. In 2012, May was ranked the 2nd greatest guitarist of all time by a Guitar World magazine readers poll.īrian is mostly known for using the Red Special – a guitar which he made with the help of his father when he was a teenager. 26 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time”.
His an English musician and astrophysicist most widely known as the guitarist, songwriter and occasional singer of the rock band Queen. He was ranked at No.
Brian May was born on 19 July 1947 in Hampton, London.
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