RS Custom Red Special 1964 Supreme Brian May Signature Guitar Queen
Absolutely right replica Brian May 's Queen Guitar - Red Special - handmade in USA.
Unlike the primary instruments of most musicians, the Red Special was built by its player, May, along with his father.[6] They began to work on the guitar in August 1963, with the project taking two years to complete. The neck was constructed from wood from a "hundred-year-old-ish" fireplace mantel[2] that a friend of the family was about to throw away. The neck was hand-shaped into the desired form, a job that was made more difficult by the age and quality of the wood. According to May, there are worm holes in the neck of the guitar that he filled in with matchsticks.[7]
The neck was finished with a 24-fret oak fingerboard. Each of the position inlays was hand shaped from a mother-of-pearl button.[2] May decided to position them in a personal way: two dots at the 7th and 19th fret and three at the 12th and 24th.
The body was made from blockboard (strips of softwood sandwiched between two plywood skins)[8] with oak inserts in the top and bottom layers sourced from an old table. It was covered with mahogany marquetry veneer on the top, bottom and side to give it the appearance of a solid-body guitar. The final result was technically a semi-acoustic guitar.[citation needed] It was originally intended that the guitar would have f-holes but this was never done.
White plastic shelf edging was then applied to the top and bottom edges to protect them from damage. The guitar features three single-coil pick-ups and a custom-made aluminium bridge. May purchased a set of Burns Tri-Sonic pick-ups and covered the coils of two with Araldite epoxy to reduce microphonics. The middle pickup remained uncoated and this is understood to have been modified in the early 1980s when DiMarzio examined the Red Special when designing pickups for the first Guild replica. The magnet was turned over to change its polarity and the wires on the solder posts swapped (to mimic a reverse wound coil) which made his favoured pickup combination of bridge and middle in phase humbucking. He originally wound his own pick-ups, as he had for his first guitar, but he did not like the resulting sound because of the polarity of these pick-ups: alternating North-South instead of all North.
The tremolo system is made from an old hardened-steel knife-edge shaped into a V and two motorbike valve springs to counter the 79 lbs string tension. The tension of the springs can be adjusted by screwing the bolts, which run through the middle of the springs, in or out via two small access holes next to the rear strap button. To reduce friction, the bridge was completed with rollers to allow the strings to return perfectly in tune after using the tremolo arm (the arm itself was from a bicycle saddlebag holder with a plastic knitting needle tip).[2] For the same reason, at the other end of the neck the strings pass over a zero fret and through a bakelite string guide.
Originally the guitar had a built-in distortion circuit, adapted from a mid-1960s Vox distortion effects unit. The switch for this was in front of the phase switches. May soon discovered that he preferred the sound of a Vox AC30 distorting at full power, so the circuit was removed. The switch hole is now covered by a mother-of-pearl star inlay, but was originally covered by insulation tape.
More info and history - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Special
RS Custom official - http://rscustomguitars.com/guitar_store/64_supreme
64 SUPREME MODEL
This is the top of the line in our series of Red Special models.
Custom Blockboard body with Oak inserts that is Veneered with one piece select Mahogany for both the front and back and on the sides.
The neck is a one piece of Select Mahogany capped with an Oak fretboard that is painted black.
Pearl fret markers with side markers. Locking tuners with Pearl Buttons.
The body and neck are finished in a Beautiful Classic Red Special Red and buffed to a high Gloss.
The Tremolo, Bridge, knobs, and strap buttons all are true reproductions of the original hardware design.
6 piece Aluminum Bridge with 6 stainless steel rollers.
Rocker Tremolo uses real Motorcycle inner valve springs.
3 Custom Made Burns Tri-Sonic pickups made in the UK by Adeson.
6 way switching system with master Volume and Tone with 220K custom made pots and a .033 oil and paper Cap.
The Electronic chamber is fully shielded.
Finished off with a Prespex pickguard
and little bit scenes from bohemian rhapsody ...
Awesome condition, comes with all papers, case, tags, etc.
Guitar is at my studio - Dnipro, Ukraine. I'm high rate seller on Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and other CIS countries over 7 years, check my site
Also I shipped lot of guitars to Europe, UK, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and USA already, check feedbacks.
I can ship worldwide via EMS postal service (cost from 100 till 200 $ usually).
Write me if you have any questions! Tnx for watching
