One of the most recognizable sounds in the history of rock, that of the Red Special guitar by Brian May of the Queendoes not come from a very expensive instrument. It comes out of a guitar that the guitarist himself is home built in the 1960s, as a boy, together with his father Harold. And, surprise, the credit doesn’t even go entirely to the guitar. The history of this guitar, also called “The Old Lady” and “The Fireplace”, is a little lesson in method. Faced with a limit, that is, not being able to afford an expensive guitar, Brian May did not stop: he designed an original solution, studied the electronics of the signal and obtained something unrepeatable. A helpful reminder: It’s often not the most expensive tool that makes the difference, but how we understand and put things together. Together with the guitarist Marco Di Marco, let’s find out how the Red Special is made and where that tone really comes from.
We are in the early sixties. Young Brian May he can’t afford a Fender or a Gibsonso with the father Harold he decides to build a guitar from scratch, with the idea of making it even better than those on the market. The work lasts about two years, from 1963 al 1964. The materials are almost all recycled:
- The handle is made from an old one mahogany fireplace over a century old, with the holes left by woodworms plugged with matches
- The body is made of oak and wood taken from old furniture
- The decorations are mother-of-pearl buttons
The Red Special has a semi-hollow bodyi.e. partly empty, which helps the instrument to sustain the notes and produce the controlled feedback that Brian was looking for. The bridge and vibrato lever are hand-built, with springs of a motorcycle and the tip of a knitting needle. But the heart of the sound are the three pickupsthe magnets that transform the vibration of the strings into an electrical signal. Unlike a Fender, where the pickups work in parallel, here they are connected in seriesone after the other: the signal that comes out is more powerful and full-bodied. Furthermore, each pickup has on, off and phase reverse switches, which gives a huge range of sounds, including the thin and cutting tone of the more “operatic” section of Bohemian Rhapsody.
The timbre of Freddie Mercury’s guitarist does not arise from the guitar alone, but from a chain of three elements. The first is the Red Special. The second is the treble boostera small pedal that cuts the bass, enhances the medium-high frequencies and always stays on. The third is theVox AC30 amplifierpushed to the max. The pickups in series send an already strong signal, the treble booster increases it even more, and the amplifier goes into saturation, that is, it distorts in a natural and warm way, without modern distortion pedals. The result is that sound that is both distorted and crystalline. The key point is that it is enough to remove one of these three elements for the magic to disappear: it is the combination, not the single piece, that makes the sound.
