Building a Brian May’s (Queen) RED SPECIAL in 2023

Here it is at last, my way over-due film about the making of a Red Special replica ! As I’ve stated over and over again on this channel, I’m a huge Brian May fan. More than just a legendary rockstar, he’s like a celebrity role model for me. His careers, both musical and acadamic, his brilliant mind, his odd ways of approaching things, and his humility, have always inspired me. As a kid I pretended to be part of Queen, and later on as a teenager, I kept saying that I wanted to be an astrophysicist (that was until my math teacher told me I was too dumb for that; and I must admit she was right). As someone who grew up in the 90’s and 00’s, I’ve read a lot of rumors about the Red Special, most of which turned out to be false or imprecise. Those were urban legends spread across amateur Queen and Brian May’s fanpages at the time (you know, the ones with flames GIFs and scrolling text all over the place). For example, for the longest time, I thought that the Red Special was either made out of a fireplace mantle OR a pine/oak table, and someone had to be wrong. Turns out it was both: the body is made out of pine, salvaged from a table, and the neck was a mahogany fire mantle, full of wormholes. This takes me to where it all started. When I released my “Shelf guitar“, the video drew a lot of attention and people started to ask me in the comments if I’d ever consider building a Red Special. My answer was always the same: I’m not ready. Now remember that I’ve always been a Brian May fan, but the fact is, I’ve never ever tried to play a Queen song in my entire life. The man is like a demi-god to me, and to this day, I find it very intimidating to even try to cover one of his solos. I promised I would make this guitar/video as soon as I’d reach 100K subscribers on Youtube, it started out as a joke but someday it happened, I had to keep my promise. So in Spring 2022 I started documenting. I bought plans from (highly recommended!), and the Red Special book from Brian May/Simon Bradley and went to work. I have been feeling extatic during the entire process. It really felt like bobsleighing in Dr. May’s brain, asking myself the questions he answered 60 years before and recreating the parts he made with his dad, so long ago, but with my own kids. Now I can see you coming: I didn’t design the guitar, I didn’t wind the pickups, and certainly did not build the hardware. Well, that occured to me too, it felt like cheating, and rightfully so. That’s why in the middle of that summer, to make things right, I too decided to make a guitar of my own design, with furniture I had in my house. Sadly it was 2022 and not 1962, so no pine table or mahogany fireplace for me: I made a guitar using Ikea furniture. I did not try to stay historically accurate for the entire build, as it is completely impossible. Here are the main differences between my build and the original: - For starter, mine is not a mystical beast that rocked the world continuously during 6 decades - I didn’t paint the oak fretboard in black, I used dye, and I regret it. Don’t do that. - My pine core is a little shallower because my oak plywood was a bit thicker (I’m talking about 1 mm) - I couldn’t find any convincing mahogany veneer, so I made my own, once again, a bit thicker than the original. Still love it though. - Same thing for the sides: I had to glue tiny square pieces together, like a monk, to respect the orientation of the grain. Lucky for me I had good company. - I didn’t make all the hardware, I bought it on (again, highly recommended). They made all the pieces of hardware according to the plans from the Red Special library - I did use some electrical tools ! I find it mind bugging that Brian and Harold managed to do that without any electricity. I did make a guitar with one hand and no electricity once, but it was a tele, not the “engineer’s guitar“ that is the Red Special. There’s a ton of things to say about this guitar and its construction, this is why I’m definitely gonna make a voice-over version of this. If you have any topic you’d like me to expand on, feel free to ask your questions in the comments and I’ll make sure to mention them it in the next video. Sound demos are recorded on an Strymon Iridium, using the Chime setting, with the A speaker sim. On the last track you can hear it hard-panned on the left channel, the right channel is a Universal Audio Ruby 63. All of the signal is fed through Logic without any other pedal except for a homemade Treble Booster (I used the original circuit of the Dallas Rangemaster, in a custom point-to-point design, with a germanium transistor). I have 2 videos in stock for you, and I’m working on a third right now (U-bass for my 6 year old girl; you can see her play a Harley Benton in the last clip, I’m so proud of her). To keep track of my current builds: Allez, Bisous ! tchiks