Brian May's Red Special: A Short History

this video is brought to you with the support of TruFire learn practice and play with TruFire [Music] [Applause] hi this is Keith Williams welcome to five art world where it's going to help you get the most music from the least gear we can talk about players that use one style of guitar throughout their career but no one exemplifies the one guitar life like sir Dr Brian Harold May playing not just a single instrument but one that he and his father built at home Brad's guitar tech from 1978 to 1992 jabi zealous said of the guitar it's not like it's a Stradivarius where you can just go out and buy another one it's the red special and there isn't anything else like it Ryan May should be the poster child for most music from the least gear in a way I should have made this video three years ago when I made how many guitars do you need because the guitarist in one of the biggest bands in rock history did almost all the playing on this one iconic instrument my script editor Perry pointed out to me that we saw May holding other guitars in music videos almost like they were part of a costume but not live on stage and only very rarely in the studio did you use something else he imagined the guitar and built the guitar he played the guitar but there's a bit more to the story and it's a good one so if you've always wanted to know the story behind that guitar then stay tuned because this is the 5 watt World Short History a brand maze red special if you enjoy our videos make sure to subscribe or grab a t-shirt hoodie or a snot preset pack to support what we do they become a bigger part of 5 watt World sign up for the friends of 5 Watt on patreon the links are in the description Brian Harold May was born on the 19th of July 1947 in the Hampton Hill near twickertum Middlesex England he was the only child of Ruth and Harold May Harold worked as a draftsman at the ministry of Aviation and had worked as an electrical engineer during the war Brian did exceptionally well in school and won a scholarship to Hampton grammar school what is the high school level here in the U.S he went on to study mathematics and physics at Imperial College London and completed his BS there then went on to begin a studying astronomy at the gradual level which we now refer to as astrophysics Brian's father played the family piano by ear Brian said that his dad could pick up most any tune and sit down and play it Bryant's own piano lessons ended around the age of seven when he could no longer fool his teacher that he was reading the music as he too was playing by ear as around this time he became interested in guitar and his parents scraped together the seven guineas to buy him his first guitar an acoustic Eggman for his seventh birthday he'd been playing his father's ukulele and he began moving chords he knew from there over the guitar he eventually fell into the Broad River of guitar music that became his influences Clapton plugged into a marshall then Hendricks but also the Beatles and in particularly George Harrison's clean lead tones but also Chet Atkins Django Reinhardt and Charlie Byrd a project to build a pickup for the Eggman was the beginning of the Father and Son collaboration that would one day yield the red special Brian's father had worked on radio and radar during the war he didn't know about pickups but he certainly understood amplification and that proved valuable they bought magnets at a local hardware store and set about designing a simple machine that would wind the fine wire onto the bobbin without breaking the wire the pickup project for the Eggman fanned the fire of desire for a full-on electric and so he started a wish list in his head he wanted multiple pickups and a tremolo along with a body that would feed back in a controlled way to enhance the stain all these ideas added up to something more than they could afford so after dismissing all the cheap copies of fenders and Gibson's Father and Son decided that the only thing to do was to build the guitar themselves it was a long process of trial and error and may said that it was a deep learning experience because included learning to forgive yourself if you made a mistake and had to find a way around it his dad was a classic hobbyist and had created a workshop in the extra bedroom in their small suburban home as such she held on to bits and pieces of wood on the chance that they'd be needed in the end most of the parts for the guitar were there in a corner of the workshop the center of the body was made with a piece of old oak table and the wood was so dense that it blunted the chisels and left the Father and Son team with blisters on their hands May's many years with and his love for his Eggman acoustic figured into many aspects of what he'd want in the red special and it's also what started him doing some guitar projects along with the problem solving that would be essential during the bill of the special for example the Eggman lacked a DOT marker at the seventh fret so he decided he'd make and install one himself he attached a button from a box of spares his mother kept to the end of a steel rod then filed and sanded it to the size this technique would set the stage for making all the markers for the special designing the body he started with the general shape of the Eggman and added cutaways that appealed to him the double cutaway was to allow him to get to the top of the fingerboard [Music] [Applause] [Music] it didn't make sense to him that most electric guitars only had 22 Frets so to capture the full two octaves he decided it would be a 24 fret guitar to make it easier to form larger chord shapes he settled on a slightly shorter scale length of 24 inches this was compared to 24 and three quarter on many Gibsons and 25 and a half inches on most fenders the neck was intended to be modeled after his Eggman but he didn't remember to calculate the thickness of the fingerboard so in the end the neck is slightly thicker but he really liked the way it turned out the Knack is famously made from Mahogany from an old fireplace mantle they bound the body with a product designed to trim the edge of shelves which was then trimmed down to the top the neck is anchored to the piece of 100 year old oak mentioned earlier but the majority of the body was made from gluing many blocks of wood together and then Brian chiseling out the chambers the body is 1 9 16 inch thick with a veneer mahogany on the top and back the neck is attached to the body with a single bolt that also holds the end of the truss rod in place once tightened down this creates an incredibly tight and strong connection for the body and neck the original impetus for building solid body guitars were to stop feedback at stage volumes but may watch the intentional feedback that Jimi Hendrix Jeff Beck and P Townsend were getting and decided to chase that so to encourage this they added Hollow Chambers in the body of the guitar in the end this meant by just finding the right spot on stage he could more easily had control the feedback and have infinite sustain he originally intended the guitar to have an f-hole but as it functioned well without it and because once you cut it you can't uncut it he never added it he then bought veneers of mahogany something readily available for use in furniture and used it for the top and back Brian always wanted the red special to be mostly a natural mahogany finish with just a little red color to highlight the grain the Finish was rustin's plastic coating and they brushed on and then sanded down with the progressively fine sandpapers between coats leading up to the Polishing Compound at the end the Finish held up amazingly well and was only restored by Greg fryer in 1998. May wanted ebony for the fingerboard but they couldn't afford it so the fingerboard is made of another piece of very old oak to which he applied many coats of the same rust and finish as used on the body but in Black the Eggman had a flat fingerboard as many inexpensive Acoustics did but Brian wanted to get the radius just right to go along with the neck shape he'd created the fingerboard radius is seven and a quarter inches like an old Fender the radius was done by hand using a template he made for consistency and it was shaped with endless amounts of sandpaper if after setting the template on the neck he could see light coming through he knew he had to keep sanding he bought fretwire at a local shop but it was taller than he wanted so he filed each fret down to the height and shape he wanted by hand like the fingerboard template he made a metal jig to bend each fret before it was installed in the neck amazingly this special has never been re-fretted only the zero fret a spare of which he made at the time the guitar was built has been changed out the nut has cut slots to run the strings through but due to having a zero fret the strings do not need to sit down in the bottom of the groove eliminating another possible friction point for the tremolo system the headstock shape was of course designed so that the strings could run very straight to the tuners again to help with tuning stability the tuners were one of the few aftermarket parts on the guitar and they bought them at the same shop where they bought their fret wire the tuners have been replaced many times over the years and the guitar currently wears a set of locking Shaler M6 machines with small parlayed buttons Brian has always used light strings and in the early days of the band the gauges were 8 10 11 22 30 and 34. it doesn't like the sound of brand new strings so he has his Tech change the strings out one at a time so as to not change the sound of the entire guitar at once he currently uses a signature string set from Optima the Optima gold 2028m the strings have a steel core plated with 24 karat gold the gauges are slightly heavier now running from 9 to 42. Brian famously uses a Sixpence coin as a pick the coins were actually removed from circulation by the government in 1971 but there have been commemorative runs of the Brian May and queen themed coin picks the Sixpence was made of relatively soft metal but it had a serrated edge May said he likes the firmness of using the coin but he also used the serrated edge as an effect you can hear this clearly on the intro riff too it's late from 1977's News of the World another and very different example of the serration is a main riff of keep yourself alive where it provides a percussive attack aided by some tape machine phase shifting of course Brian glued a Brian May Medusa commemorative Sixpence to the headstock a Brit special at some point along the way I reached out to True fire to be my sponsor because I've used them for years with over 2 million users worldwide whether you're a beginner intermediate or advanced level player TruFire has lessons to enhance and Inspire your playing if 35 off courses using a promo code 5 watt 35 or like I do sign up for the all access pass to use the entire TruFire catalog I really like TruFire I think if you give them a shot you'll like them too sign up now to start your journey to being a better guitarist I'd like to thank you fire for their support in making this video a big Focus for the father-son team was the design of the tremolo system there were no quality aftermarket tremolos available that did what he imagined looking at the design of the Fender Stratocaster tremolo for example Brian realized that they were really just Bridges where the mounting screws were loose he realized that they were subject to friction at so many points along the string that there were lots of reasons that it didn't stay in tune after use to minimize this they came up with a bridge piece rocking on a knife edge to this they added a bridge that was filed out of a piece of solid aluminum set into the bridge were tiny rollers all handmade that would allow the string to move freely the rollers weren't held in place by any mechanism because to do so would add a point of friction so if May broke a string during a show the bridge roller would likely be lost he also had to be very careful when changing strings or one of the tiny rollers could go missing so I had to make and carry spares eventually finding someone that can make them for him because he always rests his palm on the bridge when he plays having the rollers be free-floating was critical to his sound the tension in the bridge was provided by adjustable Springs the tension on the springs is adjustable through two small holes on either side of the bottom strap button motorcycle guy like me was delighted to learn that they used valve springs from a Norton motorcycle a classic British brand The Innovation continued with the wiring the guitar that probably comes to mind when you see the three pickups is a Stratocaster but a strat didn't have a five-way switch until 1977. in the 60s it was simply a three-way switch on or off for each of the three pickups May wanted much more so he created switching that allowed for any combination of the three pickups to be on or off and in or out of phase after all those switches there's a single master volume and tone control the control knobs were at first just cheap radio knobs but he later made a set of custom knobs with knurling and an index marker the pots were out over time so they've been replaced many times the set of three pickups they made at first were nearly identical to the ones they'd made for the Eggman unfortunately the homemade pickups made an unusual sound as he bent the first string up that could not be isolated and fixed so Brian resorted to heading down to Burns guitars on Tottenham Court Road the only pickups they sold were the trisonics they cost three guineas or three pounds and three Shillings each and he bought three of them the trisonics have bar magnets and this solved the volume fade they were getting during bending initially the pickups were quite microphonic so may took them apart and filled them with aeraldite a type of epoxy this did the trick the pickups were screwed directly to the body the burns pickups were not quite as bright as his homemade set but having slightly darker pickups with his eventual rig of a treble booster into an ac30 was a match made in heaven the pickups were then wired in series with switches turning them on or off it particularly liked the sound of the bridge and middle pickup in series and used it for much of the Rhythm and solo work on Tie Your Mother Down Stone Cold crazy is a good example of the bridge and middle pickups out of phase for the solo on Bohemian Rhapsody he used the middle and neck pickups but one is switched out of phase to get the harmonics he wanted he's commented that across the entirety of Bohemian Rhapsody he thinks to use every pickup combination available on the guitar he said that he could hear the sound he wanted in his head and he would switch pickups on and off until he found what he was looking for the same set of pickups are in the guitar to this day the scratch blade was cut from a sheet of perspex and is attached to the body with just six screws perspex was better known as an early transparent plastic but it was also made in gloss black and that's what Brian used it had to be large enough to cover all the wiring and switches and Brian also wanted it to be easily removable for Servicing so all the electronics and the pickups are mounted to the body and after taking the knobs off the volume and tone you can lift the plate right off the guitar and get to everything underneath at one point he mounted a Vox fuzz inside the guitar but after a year of it not giving him the tone he wanted it was removed this left a rectangular hole in the guard for many years the truss rod and tremolo cover were also made of the same perspex material and with that the guitar was complete [Applause] thank you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] the years of the guitar build crossed into his time at the University and once the red special was complete he began playing gigs with his first band which was named 1984 after the George Orwell novel next Brian was in the band smile that would include Roger Taylor who would later play drums and queen when Queen began to take off Brian was years into his PhD work in astrophysics and he had to decide to set his thesis work aside to pursue playing in the band Brian would return to the university and complete the PhD in 2007. 30 years after he began the singing tones of Jimi Hendrix sent him chasing those sounds he and his friends fell into the habit of going to see Rory Gallagher on Thursday nights at the Marquis Club they'd sneak into the back after the gig so they'd be there when Gallagher was loading out and they could ask him questions about getting his tones Rory was very helpful and pointed me to the Dallas range master and his beloved Fox ac30 May went out and bought two very beat up AC 30s for 25 pounds each a lot of money at the time plugged in the red special and there was the Brian may sound we all know and love once the band took off it was clear that Brian should have at least one backup guitar so in the 70s British luthier John Burch was commissioned to build a copy of the red special as a live backup instrument in the end much of the work was done by John Diggins an apprentice who worked in The Birches shop and later went on to found his own company both men feature prominently in the history of guitars built for Black Sabbath's Tony iomi see that video for more details about Birch and Diggins the guitar was never a close copy of the special having a few too many gibson-like influences for example the headstock angle was much steeper and that made the guitar almost impossible to keep in tune according to his guitar tech in the 70s Joby zealous Brian never really liked the guitar and at a show in the Meadowlands in New Jersey in 82 after breaking a string on the Birch guitar he threw it off the back of the stage in frustration the guitar was broken but the pieces were kept and it would eventually be put back together in 1998 Brian connected with Australian luthier Greg fryer fryer had written him a letter saying that it would be an absolute honor to be able to build Brian a proper copy of the red special after flying to England to go over the red special he returned 18 months later with three copies of the special that really impressed Brian thrilled with the copies Brian enlisted Friar to go through the red special and do some repairs on the guitar there in England to cover the hole that was left on the Vox fuzzer removed Friar made his star in honor of Brian's astronomy background to fill in the space he also fabricated and replaced the original pickup surrounds which were badly worn and while he had it apart he added copper foil to the back of the Guard to help cut noise and interference they took the trisonic pickups apart and the brass covers which had become dented in over the years of hard use with a six pence for a pick had to be bent back into shape in addition the pickups were soaked in paraffin to further reduce microphonics he replaced the fifth fret dot with a new one that fryer made in the same way that Brian had made the originals in particular The Binding needed some repairs being held in in some places with adhesive tape in 2003 after Andrew Guyton had done some repair work on the red special Brian's guitar tech and assistant Pete malandrone approached Guyton about building some exact replicas of the red special Guyton agreed and spent two days but taking measurements and examining the guitar in addition maladron arranged to have the guitar X-rayed at St Bart's Hospital in London the x-rays show much of what could not be learned from General examination of the guitar the size of the cavities inside the way the block board was attached to the Oak center block and the specifics of the tremolo mounting they agreed to make a limited run of 50 guitars 40 in red and 10 in green because Andrew Guyton had seen the guild BM guitars in green and loved the way they looked geiten has continued to work with Brian on custom instruments and on the design of the current Brian May guitar company guitars one of the more interesting projects was an arch Top guitar with the addition of Piezo pickups in the bridge shaped like the special that Brian uses to play acoustic numbers live you can see many of the special Customs that Guyton has built for Brian on the Guyton website when it came time to make the movie Bohemian Rhapsody Guyton built two replicas one of the guitar as it appeared in the 70s and another in the state it was in by 1985 for the Live Aid concert there wasn't time to create working guitars but the props had a level of detail that only someone with guidance level of knowledge of the guitar's history could have produced interestingly Maine never patented anything about the original build not the shape nor the uniquely designed parts that he and his father had brought into being he said that the patent process was both cumbersome and expensive so not surprisingly over the years many versions of the red special have been produced by various companies and custom Builders though many were in cooperation with Brian the first were built by grico in the late 70s the Japanese built bm-900 Greco sent Brian a guitar in 77 and he actually used it on a top of the pops filming date of course top of the pops like most TV at the time had the band miming their Tunes to a recording we weren't really hearing the grico Rico wanted to work with him to produce a model but Brian is supposed to have never responded and 77 Greco produced the bm-900 and in 83 they produced the bm80 and bm90 guitars these earliest copies are thought to be very good and are very collectible today in 93 and 94 Guild built the bm-01 it was a solid body replica with three custom Seymour Duncan pickups and a custom tremolo system it came with a script BM on the truss rod cover and Brian's signature on the back of the headstock these rare guitars now fetch upwards of four to five thousand dollars on the used Market Brian has a number of them in his personal collection in the early 2000s the burns Guitar Company of England worked with Brian to reissue a guitar modeled on the red special with a number of finishes with a 24 inch scale length and of course the burns trisonic pickups the guitars were played during the performances of the queen Musical that ran for a dozen years in London this project eventually led to the formation of the Brian May guitar company Brian May Guitars has been building replicas of the red special at various price points since 2004. the design has been modified slightly to make them both more affordable but also to take advantage of quality parts that just weren't available at the time for example they have a set neck and a modern Wilkinson tremolo the guitar design had input from both Greg fryer and Andrew Guyton from 2007 to 2015 RS custom guitars in Nashville built handmade replicas of the red special that are very respected I had a chance to speak to Everett wood who headed up the builds and he was a wealth of information about the history of the guitar Brian May was knighted by King Charles on March 14 2023 making it clear how his home country feels about his creative force and British music and for his work with charity though they released their last record in 1995. four years after Freddie Mercury's passing Queen remains one of the most popular rock bands in history as evidenced by the 47 million monthly listeners on Spotify when the movie Bohemian Rhapsody came out Spotify released that 70 percent of Queen's listeners were under the age of 35. highlighting the appeal of Queen's music much of which was released before the majority of their fans were born it's no surprise that guitarist fans and guitar designers remain fascinated and inspired by this iconic instrument there are many famous Les Paul's many famous stratocasters and telecasters that there is only one red special if I missed your favorite part of the story of Brian May's red special please put in the comments for everyone to enjoy I know from experience that I can count on you if you like this video you might enjoy my video on the greeny Les Paul that's been owned and used by Peter Green Gary Moore and now kurkhama first and foremost I need to thank Angus Clark for writing playing and producing the music used in the video having spent a few years in a queen cover band I knew Angus was the right choice for this foreign [Music] courses on TruFire to learn from his vast experience I need to thank my script editor Perry McManus for his long interest in making this particular video Perry is one of those fans not old enough to remember the release of Knight at the Opera but is deep enough to love it this video would not have been possible without the book Brian May's red special written by Brian May and Simon Bradley if you're a Brian May fan this book belongs on your shelf I want to thank everyone that stopped by the store to pick up a t-shirt hoodie mug or a stop preset pack in particular I need to thank the friends of 5 watt be the guitar Community I've always wanted and I love getting messages within the patreon world your all five watt world I just make the videos if you enjoyed this short history of Brian maze red special hit the like button and if you haven't subscribed yet go ahead and hit that too thanks for hanging with me till the end until next time this is Keith Williams thanks for being a part of the five black [Music]

Channel: five watt world

Views: 80,405

Keywords: five watt world, Keith williams, queen, Brian may, red special

Id: CVC5dpiKciA

Length: 24min 26sec (1466 seconds)

Published: Sat May 27 2023