THE RED SPECIAL: BRIAN MAY’S handcrafted GUITAR

Guitarists are a special breed, as well as numerous of them have a close connection with the instruments they play. It may be a particular brand of guitar, or a specific configuration needed to accomplish the noise they’re looking for. nobody has a better bond with an instrument than Brian may to his Red Special. The guitar he explored with as well as played with his profession with Queen as well as beyond had extremely humble beginnings. It was developed from scratch by Brian as well as his dad Harold May.

A young Brian may playing the brand new Red Special. note the disk magnets of the original handcrafted pickups
It was the early 1960’s as well as a young teenaged Brian may desired an electric guitar. The issue was that the fairly new instruments were still rather costly — into the numerous dollars. Well beyond the implies of the moderate family’s budget. All was not lost though. Brian’s dad Harold was an electrical engineer as well as a hacker of sorts. He developed the family’s radio, TV, as well as even furniture around the house. Harold suggested the two develop a new electric guitar from scratch as a father-son project. This was the beginning of a two-year odyssey that resulted in the development of one of the world’s many well-known musical instruments.

Brian was already an accomplished guitarist, discovering very first on his dad’s George Formby Banjo-ukulele, as well as graduating to an Egmond acoustic guitar. Brian’s very first forays into electric guitars came from experimenting keeping that Egmond. If you look close, you can even see the influence it had on the final style of the Red Special.

Body as well as Neck

The neck of the guitar is mahogany, made of a Victorian age fireplace mantle. The building which housed the fireplace was long gone, as well as Harold occurred to have the mantle in his workshop. Brian filled the wormholes with matchsticks as he carved out the neck.

The center body of the Red special was produced from oak, the wood recycled from an old table. The sides of the guitar might be made from weaker material because they don’t have to support the string tension. These were made of blockboard — an engineered material made of blocks of softwood sandwiched between two pieces of veneer. All this wood was cut, carved, as well as shaped utilizing only hand tools. Oak as well as mahogany are hardwoods, so one can picture exactly how long it took to carve a block of it into something looking like a guitar neck.

The neck isn’t a solid chunk of wood. many guitar necks include a steel rod called a truss bar. This rod assists the wood pull against the tension of strings. The Red special is no different. Brian as well as Harold heated one end of a steel rod, then bent it into a loop. The loop was bolted at the body side of the guitar, while the rest of the bar runs with the neck to the headstock end.

Brian originally desired the guitar to be semi-acoustic, so he carved resonant chambers into the block board. He even organized to make an F-hole in the guitar body. when the guitar was done though, he couldn’t bring himself to cut a hole in the mahogany veneer which makes the outer skin of the Red Special.

The Red special overlaid with an X-Ray view showing the internals, including the valve spring tremolo system
Tremolo

Rock guitarists requirement a tremolo (or vibrato) system. This is the “whammy bar” which can add or eliminate tension on the strings, enabling the guitarist to bend all six notes at once. The issue with tremolo systems on guitars is that they don’t always come back to a clean neutral point when the musician is done bending the notes. One or much more strings will be out of tune. The Fender synchronized tremolo had this issue, as well as the issues always came down to friction.

Brian as well as Harold spent a great deal of time on the tremolo system. They utilized the neck of the guitar-in-progress to produce a tremolo testbed. The pair went with three revisions before settling on the final design. Friction is gotten rid of all over possible. The entire tremolo assembly rides on a knife edge, which Brian as well as Harold hardened utilizing situation hardening compound over the kitchen area stove. The strings trip in roller saddles. Brian made each of the rollers utilizing a hand drill as a kind of handbook lathe. The rollers aren’t captive — so a damaged string during a show implies a roller is bouncing around on stage somewhere. changing to a captive style would force Brian to modification his playing style, so he just keeps a healthy supply of spare rollers on hand. Overall, this was a groundbreaking design. In Brian’s own words “…everybody was stating I ought to have patented it, however patents are a pain in the neck, as well as why not share whatever with the world?”

The Red special body, showing the internals of the valve spring Tremolo system (Greg Fryer)
The nut, or headstock end of the strings, is likewise a frictionless design. The Red special utilizes a zero-fret, so the strings don’t depend on touching the nut to stay in tune. It just is a guide between the zero fret. even with friction eliminated, something still has to offer sufficient force to hold the strings in tune, yet stay light sufficient for the guitarist to utilize the tremolo bar. many tremolo systems utilize tension springs in the back of the guitar for this. Brian as well as Harold went with compression springs mounted on the front of the guitar. Specifically, they utilized valve springs from a motorcycle. depending upon who is telling the tale, it’s either a Norton or a 1928 Panther motorcycle. two holes in the bottom of the guitar near the strap button enable Brian to change the tension in the general system.

The tremolo arm is most likely the most talked about piece of the Red Special. The arm itself was built from the arm of a bicycle luggage rack. The sharp metal end of the rod would make playing the Red special a unpleasant experience. Brian resolved this by raiding his mother’s knitting supplies. A big knitting needle, cut as well as developed just right, serves as the suggestion of the tremolo arm.

Switches

Switch detail on the Red special (Greg Fryer)
The pickup changing system is one of the most striking differences between the Red special as well as regular guitars of its day. many guitars have a two or three setting switch to choose one of the three pickups. The Red special has six switches. When the Red special was at first built, Brian evaluated out different configurations for pickup wiring. The pickups might be wired in parallel or series, as well as wired in phase or out of phase. Brian couldn’t choose on only one or two configurations, so he as well as Harold produced a switch matrix which provided him much more flexibility. The pickups are wired in series. The top row of switches (from the guitarists view) allows or shorts each of the three pickups.The short efficiently acts as an on-off switch for that pickup. The bottom row of switches invert the polarity of each pickup, altering the phase. The different seems Brian was able to accomplish have been displayed on different songs. It’s not uncommon for Brian to modification settings during a tune — while recording Bohemian Rhapsody he utilized just about every switch combination.

Pickups

Every part of the Red special was a process of trial as well as error. This is the true hacker spirit behind the guitar. many trials didn’t work the very first time, however Brian as well as Harold iterated up until they reached their goals. An example of this is the pickups. Brian’s experimentation with pickups started with his Egmond guitar. He purchased some Eclipse Magnetics button magnets from the regional hardware store. These developed the core of the pickup. Harold then assisted him develop a coil winding machine, which enabled Brian to manually wind countless turns of fine copper cable around the pickups. It even had a wind counter developed from a bicycle odometer.

The internals of the middle pickup from the Red Special. (Greg Fryer)
Brian didn’t have an amplifier yet, so he plugged into the family’s radio. The pickups worked! They were extremely bright sounding, however had one flaw. When bending notes, Brian discovered there would be an strange noise as the string moved across the pickup. He associated it to the North-South positioning of the disk magnet poles. cutting the magnets was beyond the tools he had, as well as customized magnets were out of the budget. The pickups worked, as well as these were the original gadgets utilized in the Red Special. Eventually, though, Brian had to repair the string bending problem. He headed off to the store as well as purchased three Burns Tri-Sonic guitar pickups. He coated these in epoxy to decrease the microphonics as well as then installed them in the Red Special. These exact same three pickups still reside in the guitar today. It’s worth noting that the pickups on the Red special get an amazing amount of abuse. This has a great deal to finish with Brian’s option in plectrum. many guitarists utilize a plastic pick. Brian has always utilized a sixpence coin. It’s an integral part of his style as well as sound, the serrated edge sure does a number on the pickup covers.

After the build

Brian may with his Red special onstage with Freddie Mercury in 1985
The Red special guitar was completed in the early 1960’s. Brian went on to play the guitar in his bands 1984 as well as Smile. It wasn’t up until Queen in the 1970’s that he truly hit it big. because then the Red special has been around the world as well as played in numerous shows. Brian has had backups made, however his main instrument is still the exact same one he as well as his father developed all those years ago.

One may believe that a handcrafted instrument such as this would need a ton of upkeep. It turns out that the Red special was so well made that it never had a major problem. After almost 40 years the special was showing its age though, so in 1998, the Red special was overhauled as well as refinished by the cautious hands of luthier Greg Fryer. His site details the work done, as well as includes some outstanding pictures of the internals of the Red Special.

If you do want to checked out much more about the Red Special, certainly inspect out by Brian may as well as Simon Bradley’s book on the subject. The book shows the level of detail Brian as well as Harold went to — not only in building however in documenting the Red Special. These include full-scale dimensional drawings and handwritten reports on each process utilized to develop the guitar.