the Red Special

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Brian’s guitar, the “Red Special”, which he made as a teenager with the help of his father, was made out of the following parts.
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The neck was hand carved by Brian from an old mahogany fireplace mantel that a friend was throwing out.
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The body was made out of a piece of oak and whatever other wood he and his father could find.
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The fret markers were buttons found in his mother’s button box.
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When making the pickups, Brian bought 3 burns pickups, which of course Brian modified himself.
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The whammy bar was made from a kick stand taken off of an old motorcycle.
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The bridge was hand carven out of steel and the tremolo system included 2 springs from an old motorcycle.

It is probably the cheapest (money-wise) piece of equipment the band used.


 

Below text taken from www.brianmaycentral.net
Brian's guitar, the Red Special is unique. He built the guitar himself, with some help from his father, when he was still at school. Incredibly, over 40 years later, this is still Brian's number one guitar and he regularly uses it both on stage and in the studio. One of the unique features of the Red Special is its series wiring for the pickups. Most guitars are wired in parallel, but Brian equipped his guitar with 3 single coil pickups wired in series. Each pickup has a switch to turn it on and off and a phase change switch. This allows a huge variety of sounds as different pickups and different phase combinations are used. The neck of the guitar is mahogany, from an old fire-surround. The centre block and fingerboard are oak and the front and back of the body are a mahogany veneer over blockboard. The construction is semi-solid with large routed areas either side of the centre block of the body. Brian made his guitar from the materials he had available at the time - these included motorbike valve springs (tremolo springs), shelf edging (white binding) and mother of pearl buttons (neck position dots). The pickups were originally home-made but Brian was unhappy with the sound and replaced them with Burns Tri-sonic single coils, which he potted with epoxy resin to prevent them becoming microphonic. Unusually for its time, the guitar features a 24 fret (2 octave) neck and a tremolo system which will 'dive bomb' and come back perfectly in tune. It cost him just £8 to build the guitar and it is now surely one of the most unique and valuable guitars in the world.
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