Videos:

24th September 2025:

Yesterday after doing some modification and setting up work on the New Guinea Rosewood Astronaut guitar, I later made a couple of GoPro videos which compare the sounds of the New Guinea Rosewood guitar with the Mahogany version.

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17th September 2025:

Last week I recorded a video which demonstrated the pickup and switching sounds of the new Astronaut guitar.

Below are the pedal and amp settings that I used in the video, plus photos of the Astronaut guitar and the blue Strat® I used for comparisons when using a guitar strap.

 

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8th September 2025:

When Kazutaka Ijuin and Daizo Tokuda visited my workshop in early June 2025 with the first two prototype Astronaut guitars, we recorded GoPro videos of my first impressions of the new guitars. I had not played guitar in nearly a year, so these were really ‘first impressions’ for me in many ways!

Not having played for so long made me feel apprehensive, especially playing the longer Fender® scale, and my fingers felt stiff and the finger tips were soft. But to my great delight, the guitars felt and played beautifully and immediately I felt ‘at home’ on them. Strings were easy to bend with the flatter 12″ radius fingerboard and the 6150 Dunlop medium-high fretwire. The guitars are an absolute joy to play in so many ways, and they also sound fantastic.

In the video I explain why I began to think in 1998 about redesigning Brian May’s Red Special guitar especially for Fender® players, and what I wanted in the guitar.

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14th July 2025:

Last Thursday I took the two Astronaut prototype guitars to show my friend Milton Brown. Around 20 years ago I was in a band with Milton, and he is a very experienced guitarist and regularly plays live gigs in several bands he is a member of.

Milton’s main guitar is a beautiful 1964 L series Fender Stratocaster and he has a good range of effect pedals on his live pedalboard and also has several great sounding classic amps.

We made a number of videos using my GoPro Hero 7 Black action camera, and chatted away for a couple of hours comparing Milton’s Strat with the Astronaut guitars and using his pedals played through two of the amps: a 1959 Gibson modified to classic Fender Tweed 5E3 Deluxe specs, and a Fender Vibroverb.

Milton wrote this summary of the visit:

“Today I had the privilege and pleasure of putting the two Fryer/Kz Astronaut guitars through my 1959 Gibson GA6 amp which some years ago was modified by legendary Sydney amp tech Martin Kell to classic Fender 5E3 Tweed Deluxe specs. The amp has two 6V6 power valves, a GZ34 rectifier valve, plus a great sounding 12” Eminence Allesandro GA-SC64 speaker.

My first impression of the guitars was the obvious quality of the Astronaut’s build. These two guitars showed an attention to detail that exuded quality and cool.

Our main interest was to compare the new prototype guitars with my favorite 1964 L series Strat, especially because the Astronaut has been designed with Fender scale length, 3 pickup single coil configuration and a Fender style 5 way pickup selector switch.

The first thing I noticed was the beautifully comfortable neck. It reminded me of the classic old late 50s Gibsons but not the chubby neck ones.  The neck is slightly wider than the Strat, has a flatter fingerboard profile that I’ve grown to like more over the years and a superbly rounded back of the neck which feels very close to an old Strat. Medium jumbo frets were perfect and the guitar played like a dream.

The body felt comfortable and balanced and looked very cool with its woodgrain and single F hole.

The original Brian May designed Whammy Bar was an absolute delight to use. Super sensitive and held tuning perfectly. Definitely an improvement on the Strat tremolo system.

The pickups and sound are where this guitar excels. The pickups are obviously not the same as a Strat but I was amazed at how close I could get to matching my Strat’s sounds when I tried.

The tonal options available through switching from series to parallel give a great palette of sounds. There is also a pull switch on the Tone knob to get that real classic out of phase sound. It’s all there. From classic single coil to humbucker fatness, grunt and sustain.

What impressed me was how versatile the guitar is – sure it does the Brian May sounds extremely well, but this guitar could cover any style of music because of the wide range of sounds on offer.

The highlight for me was running the Astronaut through the Fryer Brian May Treble Boosters. A phenomenal sound!

Definitely a guitar you could bond with forever. Thanks for the preview Greg!

Milton Brown

Sydney Australia

10^th July 2025″

Pedals and amps used in the videos:

Video 1: Milton plays his Strat with pedals as a baseline reference:

Video 2: Milton plays the mahogany Astronaut and begins to explore its sounds.

Video 3: Milton dials up a warmer Santana ‘Smooth” sustained sound on the mahogany Astronaut guitar

Video 4: Milton plays the New Guinea Rosewood Astronaut to begin with then switches to his Strat and then back to the Astronaut

Video 6: Milton and I chat about the Astronaut guitar’s features, and I explain the origins of the guitar’s concept from when I was in Brian May’s Allerton Hill studio in 1998.

Video 7: Wrap up summary: Milton plays the Astronaut and Strat guitars through his louder Fender Vibroverb amp and gives his thoughts on the Astronaut guitar

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11th July 2023:

Over the last few days I have begun pickup testing for the new guitar and have recorded several videos. Two GoPro videos below show me playing the Kz RS Jnr Hybrid guitar with its standard KGW Trisonic pickups through Manuel Angelini’s Deacy Amp. The videos have also been a good workout for the Deacy Amp, and have allowed me to find its best voltage setting when using a Red Special guitar.

Earlier I tested the Kz RS Jnr Hybrid through a Vox MV50 amp, and my handmade custom Vox AC30 amp. In the next 7-10 days I hope to have more videos available which demonstrate Matt Netherwood’s Yonderbosk pickups fitted to the Kz RS Jnr.

The Kz RS Jnr Hybrid guitar and Treble Booster Touring pedal were played through Manuel Angelini’s Deacy Amp. The BM solo passage played was from the 1998 song ‘Why Don’t We Try Again’.

The Kz RS Jnr Hybrid and Treble Booster Touring pedal were again played through Manuel’s Deacy Amp.

Using his adjustable power supply, the voltage to the Deacy Amp was varied from 9.5V down to 7.0V to determine which setting gives the best classic Brian May Deacy sound. The BM solo passage played was from Queen’s ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’.

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14th July 2023:

More Deacy Amp testing with the Kz RS Jnr Hybrid Red Special guitar which incidentally has a 25″ scale length similar to a PRS guitar. My Astronaut guitar is designed for 25.5″ Fender scale length plus a whole lotta things Kazutaka and I have designed to suit the instrument and make it unique.

How do the phase switches on a Red Special guitar effect the guitar’s ability to feedback when using the Deacy Amp (same can be true when playing a cranked AC30):