Re: Brian May's Tone
Warning: long-winded post! way to go for a first post, eh?
Indeed, the first pickups on the Red Special were home-made, but they didn't last long because, due to the magnet polarity, they would induce noise when bending a string, so BM bought a set of Burns Tri-Sonics, which he and his father modified extensively. This included doing a rw/rp job on one of them, and the jury's still out on which one - the BMG guitars come with the middle rw/rp but it is believed that the bridge rw/rp is more likely, for this setup gets closes to BM's main sounds (bridge+middle in phase and neck+middle out of phase), and makes them hum free. The neck and bridge (I think, can't remember exactly) were potted in araldite. They probably did some other things too to exacerbate the tonal difference between each pickup with regards to its position on the body.
As for stuff you can buy, the new BM signature Tri-Sonics are supposed to be pretty close - they grace the higher spec BMG Super. They're meant to be based on the custom pickups used in the Guyton replicas. However, many a Red Special enthusiast swears by Adesons (
www.adeson.co.uk), which are aimed to be the closest replicas to the original 60s pickups, you can order them as a set with one rw/rp. The lower spec BMG guitar uses Tri-Sonics made by Kent Armstrong, which are a bit different.
Boosters: Rangemaster up to 1976, then a Cornish TB-83 until the mid-late 1990s. Now BM uses boosters made by Greg Fryer, who restored the RS and built the first accurate replicas, which exist in various incarnations to be bought - different gain levels and frequency emphasis etc. The booster is an integral part of the sound as it adds a bit of high end too, helping to tighten the potentially loose bass in a Class A amp like a Vox at high volume.
Replicas: aside from the two official ones, there are other makers such as RS Guitars (
www.rsguitars.com) and RS Custom Guitars (
www.rscustomguitars) who make high quality instruments. There used to be KZ (
www.kzguitarworks.com/englishpages/e_top.html) whose work was highly regarded, but now he's working at BMG supervising the construction of the BMG Super, which is based on his KZ Junior.
Amps: the standard issue Vox AC-30 is the CC2X, made in China, which some see as objectionable on the account of quality, such as the Celestion Blue clones. No idea what the Heritage Handwired series are like, though they do sound good on the proguitarshop.com videos on YouTube, I quite like the sound of the AC-15. There's also JMI amps (
www.jmiamplification.com), which are AC-30 clones made in the US and supposed to be good. I suppose other Class A designs by boutique makers and the like might fit the bill too. As for the Deacy amp, there's version in the works by Greg Fryer, who's spend a long time doing R & D for it.
All in all, I think it's a disservice to a RS styled guitar to use it only for Queen stuff, because its very versatile. So even the lower spec BMG guitar needn't be dismissed. From fat and warm to sharp and bright, it's there. You even have a standby mode
.
