Brian May's "Red Special"

Most of the guitarists on this site purchased their instruments from a shop or a friend, and their guitars come equipped with a brand name, Gibson or Fender. For this installment, we are going to explore a very special instrument that was handmade by its owner. The guitarist, Brian May of Queen, and the instrument, his "Red Special".

Brian May was sixteen years old when he decided he wanted to build his own electric guitar due to the fact that a good old Fender or Gibson was a bit out of his price range. So in August, 1963 he approached his father about the idea who was quite a handyman as May would remember. "My dad made everything, he made our TV when there was no TV around in the neighborhood. He was a genius!" The younger May designed the guitar himself, and as he has stated, I designed an instrument from scratch, with the intention that it would have a capability beyond anything that was out there, more tunable, with a greater range of pitches and sounds, with a better tremolo, and with a capability of feeding back through the air in a "good" way - i.e. in a self-sustaining mode."

The two men gathered up some wood from an 18th century oak fireplace mantle that a mutual friend of theirs had disassembled and was getting rid of, then set about to make the instrument. The wood itself was of fine quality however in while May was hand-shaping the neck, he was to discover two wormholes buried within. After the neck was shaped it was then fitted with a truss rod, and outfitted with an oak fret-board and twenty-four frets. Brian then outfitted it with hand-made mother of pearl inlays that he had salvaged from some buttons; these were placed with two dots at 7th and 19th fret and three at 12th and 24th. 

The body was a semi-hollow construction, with a block of oak wood running down the center and a mahogany sheet on the top and back to give the instrument the appearance of a solid-body. As he has stated, May was trying to acheive a guitar with more feedback and a hollow-bodied design would definitely help accommodate that. "Previously (ironically) electric guitars had been designed NOT to feed back, but in the hands of Jeff Beck, Pete Townshend and Jimi Hendrix, they were forced to! My Dad had the technical knowledge and skills to make the dream come true. May then bound the body with white shelf edging. Overall, the guitar weighs around eight pounds.

When it comes to electronics, the guitar is outfitted with three Burns Tri-Sonic pickups that May himself rewound so that they were reverse wound/reverse polarity; a sort of Peter Green effect. He then wax-potted them in Araldite epoxy in order to reduce microphonic feedback. Brian then equipped the guitar with a Master Volume control, Master Tone, On/Off Switch for each pickup, In/Out of Phase Switch for each pickup.

The bridge of the instrument was a custom design and featured a tremolo unit that was made from hardened-steel knife-edge shaped into a V and two motorbike valve springs to counter the string tension. To reduce friction, the bridge was completed with rollers to allow the strings to return perfectly in tune after using the tremolo arm. The arm of the tremolo unit came from a bicycle saddlebag holder with a plastic knitting needle tip.

Overall, the creation of this guitar took May and his father two years to complete, and was done in all in spare time and using only hand-tools and bits the duo could find. It's amazing to think that such an iconic instrument was cobbled together from a fireplace mantle, old motorcycle parts, and bits and bobs that the two men could find. The end result cannot be denied however, and May has used the guitar almost exclusively as his main instrument of choice throughout his entire career, in Queen and out.

May refers to the instrument as his "Old Lady" and it has never left his side, nor is it conceivable that it ever will.