Ég ætla aðeins að skrifa um gítarinn hans Brian May sem þið sjáið vonandi ennþá á fyrstu síðunni á Hljóðfæri.

Fjölskylda hans hafði ekki efni á rafmagnsgítar eins og honum langaði í þannig að hann tók sig til með föður sínum og bjó til eitt stykki rafmagnsgítar úr m.a. gömlum arni og prjónadóti. Gítar þessi hefur mikið að gera með þann hljóm sem einkennir Queen, líklega er aðeins rödd Freddie mikilvægari.

Hér fyrir neðan pósta ég nákvæmari sögu um gítarinn á ensku og ef þið hafið meiri áhuga þá getið þið farið á http://tinpan.fortunecity.com/wellerville/181/ers.htm

Everything began in the August
of 1963 in a small bedroom,  modified in laboratory.

Here Brian, with father's help, drew from an old fireplace, that a friend of family was about to throw away, most of his future axe (here is the nickname “fireplace”).  The neck was hand-shaped until it rached the desired form, it was a difficult work due to the age and the condition of wood (still today, according to Brian, there are two holes of worms!).  When the neck seemed to be good, it was screwed to the body with the addition of a strong truss-rod to keep it straight.

The body was made mostly of hard oak (to support pickups and bridge), blockboard and other woods; the final result was a sort of semi-acoustic guitar (the central block is glued to the sides and covered with two mahogany sheets to give it the appearance of a solid-body).

The neck was finished thanks to a beautiful oak fretboard (24“ scale) with 24 frets bought by Brian in Clifford Essex, Cambridge Circus, but modified to be lower; finally every one of the position inlays was hand shaped from mother of pearl buttons!.  Brian decided to position it in a personal way:  two dots at 7th and 19th fret and three at 12th and 24th.

The body was completed by three pickups and a custom-made bridge.  Brian purchased a set of Burns Tri-Sonic pickups but re-wound it with reverse wound/reverse polarity and ”potted“ the coils, to reduce microphonics, with Araldite epoxy. He originally wound his own pickups, as he had for his first guitar, but he didn'tlike the resulting sound using bending (because of the polarity of these pickups: North-South-North-South-North-South instead of North-North-North-North-North-North)

The tremolo is made of an old knife-edge which was hardened steel, bearing into a V in the body, and two motorbike valve springs to counter the string tension.  To reduce friction the bridge was completed with little rollers to allow the strings to return perfectly in tune after used the lever, for the same reason, at the other end of the neck the strings pass over a zero fret and through a graphite string guide.

And the name Red Special?  Came out by the red/brown color of the guitar after it was painted with numerous layers of Rustin's plastic coating.

Last notes: Brian (at least in the early years) used a set of 6 Rotosound round-wound/Maxima Gold strings.
This are the gauges: .008, .009, .011, .016, .022, .034.

Apparently, now he uses more traditionals gauges.

Finally, he always used an English sixpence as pick. In 1993, as part of the Back To The Light tour, Brian had a number of ”Brian May coins" minted specially with his head on them. These coins are now out of production (like the original sixpence).