As part of an interview with Brian May that was published in the UK by The Guitar Magazine on 1^st December 2017, one that first announced to the world that the Red Special’s original pickups had been found, we asked him to talk – in hitherto unrivalled depth – about the pickups, their design and what ultimately led them to be replaced by the now iconic trio of Burns Tri-Sonic single coils.

Part of the following interview forms sections of the feature published in TGM and we’re grateful to them for allowing us to publish this content in full.

The interview was conducted by Simon Bradley in October 2017

Simon Bradley: It must feel strange having the pickups back in your hands again…

Brian May: Yeah, I was worried that we couldn’t find them: it was one of those things that eats away at you in odd moments. But it’s great that Pete found them and here they are, which makes me very happy. Looking at them, it reminds me of a lot of stuff. They were, of course, original features of the guitar and they did work really well.

SB: We’ve spoken about this before, but please remind us of how you approached their design and construction

BM: I figured out that the principle behind a pickup must be that you have a coil or wire around some magnets that create a magnetic field and when the string vibrates within that magnetic field it causes a change in the flux that links the coil, as a physicist would describe it. When you change the flux you get an EMF generated in the coil, which effectively makes a current, and that’s what you amplify to make the guitar electrified. I was clear about the principle so I bought some little Eclipse button magnets from a place in Kingston (upon-Thames), screwed them to a block and put a former around them and I wound, I think, 50 gauge copper wire around them. Me and my dad made a little winder to do that, and you have to be incredibly careful with 50 gauge wire; it’s like a human hair and you can’t stress it or else your whole coil is ruined. So we wound as many turns as we could get around these pickups. Then there’s a piece of plasticard around the outside and it’s all buttoned up really neatly.

SB: And you worked out a way of fitting them into the guitar without using solder

BM: Now, that’s another invention that I never pursued. Most pickups that you buy have a couple of wires hanging out of it and you have to solder those wires onto some part of the guitar. So, my little invention was that, instead of doing that, the wires are terminated not only on little brass tabs that are built into the pickup itself, but they’re also built in around the two screws that fix it to the body. So, when you put these pickups on the guitar you don’t have to do any wiring; they’re automatically wired into the system. It’s quite a neat way of doing things as it means you can interchange pickups really quickly and easily without doing any wiring changes. I was quite proud of that!

SB: Could you describe the sound problems you experienced when using them?

BM: I remember they had an amazing top end to them, but there was one flaw, yes. I wanted to bend strings and when you bend strings with this pickup in place, it picked up the sound OK but added in was this strange sort of shuffling noise a bit like the sound of striking a match on the side of a matchbox. That obviously got in the way and it wasn’t practical to use them. Now, my theory at the time was that instead of having all north poles at the top of the pickup I had alternately north/south, north/south, north/south and what I wanted to do was cut those magnets in half so I could put all norths on one pickup and all souths on another. Unfortunately I never had the opportunity to do that as I didn’t have the equipment. It’s incredibly hard what they make the magnets out of, some kind of special steel I think, and I didn’t have anything that could touch them: it’d take all the teeth off a hack saw.

SB: Why did you opt for three apertures rather than the more customary six? It’s strange that they bear a passing resemblance to Tri-Sonics…

BM: Well, it has to be three apertures because only three magnets can go in there. They’re button shaped, with both a north and south sticking up, so it had to be three apertures rather than six. I thought that, as the polepieces are equally spaced, it would make a nice, even magnetic field but actually it doesn’t because I think what happens is the north pole, which is next to the south pole of the next one in line, draws the field in very close, which it shouldn’t: the field should really be going outwards to meet the strings. So something happens when the string hits that intense field, but I’m not sure.

BM: So, looking at them now, I’m thinking that it’d be nice to revisit and do that, cut them in half, put them back in so that all the norths are in a line and see what kind of noise the pickups make.

SB: What made you come up with the white covers? They’re quite striking

BM: I just had this white Formica and I liked the look of it. I thought they looked quite attractive at the beginning and I think the idea that you weren’t hiding the pickups, that you were making them a highlight, appealed to me. Strangely enough I didn’t really like the way they looked afterwards and I remember that when I got the photos back from Putney I sort of painted the whiteness out, thinking that they looked not very cool!

SB: You’ve told me that you have some recordings of them somewhere…

BM: Actually, I do know where they are…

SB: That’s great news! How did you go about amplifying and recording the guitar back then?

BM: In those days I used a preamp that I would plug this straight into the amplifier which served our Collaro two-track, but reversible, tape recorder. The recorder had three speed settings, 15, 7½ and 3¾ inches per second, and what happened was that if you slowed the speed down you’d lose all your top end. This happens because it becomes very inefficient so when I switched from 15 to 3¾ you’d have to compensate. The preamp had three different positions for the three speeds and if you run at 3¾ there’s a massive amount of top end being added on: it’s like a really violent EQ and that’s what I liked. That’s the precursor to the treble booster that I’ve used ever since I met Rory Gallagher.

BM: So, I’d plug the guitar into that preamp, put in on 3¾ so it’d give me the top boost, come out of that and straight into my dad’s homemade amplifier that served our record player, tape recorder, radio and everything else. So that was my little system and I remember cranking it up and my mum getting very anxious about the neighbours, but it had a real sizzle to it and that was the sound I wanted to get onstage. Again, what stopped that happening was that bending the strings didn’t work, but it had a great low end and, because of this EQ, a great top end as well.

SB: And what speakers would you have been using?

BM: I think it was just a Wharfdale speaker in a cabinet that my dad had made.

SB: Maybe you could fit the pickups onto a guitar? Maybe a Guyton or BMG Super?

BM: They had a particular sound to them and I am now wondering if we should go back and look at what they brought to the guitar. Strangely enough they would still fit onto the original guitar because the tabs that would mate with the tabs on the pickups are still there, so it could be done.

This is the last of the new pictures we’ll be sharing – at least for now.

Here’s the Red Special in all its unmistakable glory, shot in 2013. Since then it’s been around the world several times, has melted the faces of hundred of thousands of rabid punters and has enjoyed a complete overhaul courtesy of Andrew Guyton. It still plays beautifully and sounds as good as ever it did.

Not bad for something designed and built from scratch in suburban Middlesex during the mid sixties!

Happy Xmas!

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A nice shot down the length of the neck and fingerboard. Note that the coin affixed to the headlock by Brian himself is actually a Brian May ‘Maydusa’ sixpence, not a genuine example of that old English coin. The original machineheads wore out long ago and have been replaced on several occasions. These are the widely-available locking Schaller M6 tuners with pearloid buttons.

We can see the pitted nature of the frets too and, as is well known these days, the Red Special has never been refretted during its long and eventful life even though, in conventional terms at least, it could really do with it!

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Happy Xmas!

Not much explanation required here…

As Brian told Simon for the book ‘Brian May’s Red Special’, he wound a further three of these pickups from scratch and by hand with the intention of fitting them to the Red Special. However, issues with the polarity of the magnets and how they interacted with the strings as he bent them across the pickups led to the purchase of a trio of Burns Tri-Sonics single coils. And lo, with the revelation of the wonders of the Vox AC30 a mere five years away, a tone was born.

By all means share this photo, but please credit The Red Special.com should you do so.

Don’t miss Simon’s six-part blog that goes behind the scenes of the book in much more detail

For part one click here
For part two click here
For part three click here
For part four click here
For part five click here
For part six click here

Here’s the switch array plus the volume and tone pots resting on the note book of Nigel Knight. As well as experience and confidence, the trick with successfully undertaking such a daunting task as dismantling the Red Special lies with taking notes, and lots of them.

After the shoot, the guitar was successfully rewired, rebuilt, and restrung, and all pickup selections worked first time.

By all means share this photo, but please credit The Red Special.com should you do so.

Don’t miss Simon’s six-part blog that goes behind the scenes of the book in much more detail

For part one click here
For part two click here
For part three click here
For part four click here
For part five click here
For part six click here

A truly wonderful picture of the Red Special’s component parts. Brian has given us his permission to share this image, circa August 1963, that sees the body, neck and fingerboard prior to colouring, staining and finishing.

The join between the two layers of blockboard that comprise the body are clearly visible, as is the oak insert. There’s no binding as yet either, and we can see two of the screws (one to the right of the pickups and another behind where the bridge and vibrato would be sited) that hold the wooden ‘sandwich’ together.

There are the woodworm holes in the mahogany neck that Brian would fill with pieces of matchsticks, and the fingerboard sports hand-drawn marks where the mother-of-pearl buttons and frets would go: they’re not all there yet, though! We can also see two of the original three pickups plus the guitar’s first set of machineheads.

“The storage device to the left of he pickups is something I bought at one of the second hand shops in London.” Brian told us in the Red Special book. “It’s probably some kind of mount for something in a submarine, but I put bullraces and a stainless steel tube in it, which was our original design for a low friction tremolo”.

With some of Harold’s radio units also in shot, not mention a home-made power system that somehow includes a Lifebuoy soap box, this proves what a truly scientific project this would be. It’s still amazing to think that Brian would record ‘Keep Yourself Alive’ less than a decade later and a legend – to say the least – was born.

54 years later, he’s still using the guitar and it all started with this pieces.

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By all means share these photos, but please credit The Red Special.com should you do so.

Don’t miss Simon’s six-part blog that goes behind the scenes of the book in much more detail

For part one click here
For part two click here
For part three click here
For part four click here
For part five click here
For part six click here

Two pages taken from Brian’s notebook, detailing parts of the construction process of the Red Special. Written in his own hand just after the guitar was finished (thus dating the original documents to late 1964), it adds yet more detail to the build and are just two of many private papers the team had access to during the research for and compilation of the Brian May’s Red Special book.

These notes also appear on pages 32/33 of the book, but we thought it’d be useful to transcribe the copy into a format that can be more easily read. Needless to say, the book contains many more examples of Brian’s original work, including exquisite pencil drawings of designs for pickups, graphs denoting differing scale lengths, and much more.

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<page one>

A – External Body Shaping

A rough idea of the maximum dimensions of the body were decided. A number of sheets of greaseproof paper were sellotaped together and the outline was drawn full size on these sheets in pencil.

With carbon paper the tracing was transferred to the material to be used in two places (and the body was to be double-thickness) and inked in. The strips of the blockboard were made parallel to the neck.

The two laminates were cut out with a fret-saw in a conjunction with a supply of blades. That part fastening the neck in place was provisionally cut straight across, leaving a wide margin for the fretting process.

The two halves were screwed together so that their edges corresponded as closely as possible. The composite edge was more finely shaped by:

1 – Planing with the work protruding over the edge of the table, a method found to be less useful than:

<page two>

 

2 – Chiselling, with the work placed flat on a hard surface, the chisel being pushed downwards until it hit the surface.

3 – Sandpapering. This was done, again by putting the work flat on a hard surface and using a piece of sandpaper fastened round a cylindrical former. The case of the cylinder was kept pressed against the surface of the bench, so the edge was maintained perpendicular.

The part where the neck was to join was left untouched.

B – External Neck Shaping

The vertical projection of the neck was transferred to the top of the wood in a similar way to the body, taking care to allow enough length for the inclined extreme end of the head. The outline was roughly cut with a tenon saw.

The edges of the actual neck were planed straight, and the straight edges of the head were similarly treated, but the corners were left on for the time being.

The horizontal projection, or elevation, was drawn on the edges.

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By all means share these photos, but please credit The Red Special.com should you do so.

Don’t miss Simon’s six-part blog that goes behind the scenes of the book in much more detail

For part one click here
For part two click here
For part three click here
For part four click here
For part five click here
For part six click here

The tremolo springs that sit in a cavity behind the bridge.

(c) Simon Bradley/TheRedSpecial.com

There was no way of removing the tremolo block and springs without irrevocably damaging the body, so we left them where they were, much as we were itching to see the array in all its glory. The knife-edge design the Mays came up with is still staggering in its foresight, and its action and stability is unsurpassed.

Lots of additional details can be seen here too, including a coin (we suspect it’s a sixpence) sitting under the layer of copper cavity insulation installed by Greg Fryer, five of the six saddle beds and part of the rubber pad upon which the bridge pickup sits.

By all means share this photo, but please credit The Red Special.com should you do so.

Don’t miss Simon’s six-part blog that goes behind the scenes of the book in much more detail

For part one click here
For part two click here
For part three click here
For part four click here
For part five click here
For part six click here

The underside of the six switches, still in their original metal frame as built by Brian. The top row of switches as pictured here (the bottom row when the frame is within the Red Special, of course) reverse the phase of each pickup, as the wiring clearly shows.

The number of tones that this deceptively simple configuration gives is incredible and it’s interesting that no other commercially available guitar possesses anything like it, the myriad Red Special-style guitars notwithstanding.

By all means share this photo, but please credit The Red Special.com should you do so.

Don’t miss Simon’s six-part blog that goes behind the scenes of the book in much more detail

For part one click here
For part two click here
For part three click here
For part four click here
For part five click here
For part six click here