Answer: YES UNDOUBTEDLY!

It is my view that Brian May’s Red Special guitar is one of the truly GREAT electric guitar designs of the world – an inspired work of genius.

Question 2: then why the Astronaut redesign of the Red Special? (please see the answer at the bottom of this page)

It is my belief that the Red Special guitar is on a par with the other great icons of electric guitar design such as the Fender® Stratocaster® and Telecaster® , and the Gibson® Les Paul® and SG® .

What makes the Red Special all the more extraordinary is that it was designed and built entirely at home by a teenage Brian May and his creative genius father Harold between 1964 and 1966.

Question 3: OK so what makes the Red Special so great?

We’ll get to that soon, but first a little background: between mid 1996 and late 1997 I handmade 3 replica Red Special guitars for Brian May. In late November 1997 when I arrived at Brian’s Allerton Hill studio to show him the new guitars, Brian examined the guitars closely and said that they were the closest replica of his Red Special that anyone had ever made, and he soon after named the guitars John, Paul and George Burns.  Brian asked me to stay in the UK and conduct major repairs on his priceless Red Special, which had hardly been touched repairwise during its life. By that time in 1997 the Red Special was around 30 year old. The repairs were conducted at Brian’s London Allerton Hill studio where I set up a workshop for the purpose.

You can read more here:

Red Special restoration 1998

Working with Brian May on his Red Special restoration was an unbelievable privilege for me, but also one which came with a great deal of pressure and responsibility – and was no easy assignment. However one of the benefits was that this gave me a unique understanding into Brian’s extraordinary guitar and into the other important aspects of his ‘Queen’ guitar sound such as the treble boosters, the Deacy Amp, his Vox AC30 amps etc.

SO TO ANSWER QUESTION 3: WHY IS THE RED SPECIAL SO GREAT?

To me its because of 5 main points:

i) Its instantly recognisable and unique sound when played through a treble booster and a Vox AC30 Normal Channel run at full volume. As soon as you hear Brian May play you instantly know its HIM. To me this is the mark of something wonderful and unique.

ii) The unique shape and overall appearance. Nothing looks like the Red Special, and it is instantly recognisable. This is achieved by very few guitar designs.

iii)  Brian and Harold’s superb tremolo tailpiece and roller bridge system – to my mind this is the very best tremolo tailpiece/bridge system ever designed for the electric guitar. This is a brilliant work of genius which keeps the guitar extremely well in tune – and goes hand in hand with this next point.

iv) the good looking and cleverly designed headstock shape gives almost straight line string pull through nut/zero fret to the tuning machine heads and minimal angle downward pressure over the nut/zero fret.

Because if these two things combined – tremolo tailpiece & roller bridge system working with the headstock design – the guitar stays beautifully in tune with normal playing & string bending etc – and especially when using the tremolo arm.

The result of Brian and Harold’s cleverness is that the Red Special’s tremolo system stays FAR better in tune than the hugely popular Fender® Stratocaster® with its tremolo bridge. Bear in mind that the Fender® Stratocaster® is the most popular guitar ever designed with numbers made since 1954 estimated in the several millions.

v) the way the semi hollow body interacts to influence the electric sound in a very positive way. This father and son team in the mid 1960s made an electric guitar with hollowed out chambers which assisted body resonance decades before the idea caught on in the 1980s or 90s with mainstream electric guitars. Brian and Harold May were way ahead of their time with so many things.

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BACK TO QUESTION 2 POSED ABOVE:

If the Red Special is so great, then why did I feel the need to redesign it for Fender® players with the new Astronaut guitar?

You can read my short answer here: (and yes a longer more detailed answer will be coming soon along with photos and a video)

Why did I design the Astronaut guitar? Short answer