The Red Special was born in 1963, the result of 18 months hard work and development between Brian and his electrical engineer father, Harold. Unable to afford the coveted Fenders and Les Pauls of the day, the pair set about designing and building their own interpretation of the perfect electric guitar.
The guitar earned its nickname "the Fireplace" because the huge one-piece mahogany neck was laboriously hand-carved using a penknife from just that - the column support from an old mirror-type fireplace that a family friend happened to be throwing out.
The glossy fingerboard is actually made of Oak, painted black with that classic British DIY substance known as Rustin´s Plastic Coating and dotted with hand-filed Pearl butons pinched from Brian´s mum´s sewing box - as was a the end of a knitting needle that would soon find a new home as a vibrato arm tip.
The neck joins the body via a paddle-like heel extension which slots into a rectangular cut-out in the body, stopping just short of the bridge pickup. Although originally designed to be glued in, the snug neck/body join is also secured by a single bolt visible on the back of the guitar. This bolt also acts an anchor for the truss-rod end which the Mays bent into shape on the kitchen cooker.
The central section of the body was formed from an old Oak table. The rest - including the distinctive curves - were made up from two layers of blockboard, hollowed out to create acoustic chambers, and then stuck onto the sides of the oak insert. These acoustic chambers are the key to much of the guitar´s incredible high-gain resonance (in truth, May originally planned an f-hole but never got round to it). The whole body was finally covered in a Mahogany veneer, stained a deep brick-red color and then lacquered with Rustin´s, rounded off by binding sourced from some
But the May´s ingenuity didn´t end there. Brian wanted a wide-travel vibrato that would drop an octave and (gasp!) actually return to pitch after use. They realised that most vibratos of that era were riddled with flaws. The main
culprit being friction in the strings´ path of travel.
After building a few prototypes they settled on a design which used six individual aluminium bridge pieces screwed straight to the body, each supporting a low-friction steel roller saddle. Intonation was handled by small slots cut into the top of each bridge piece; if the intonation was out on an individual string, the roller could be popped out of its axle and moved back or forward accordingly to an appropriate slot. Behind these, a handmade trem block rocked against a case-hardened steel knife edge hidden under the top body veneer. Unlike a conventional Strat fulcrum trem - which stretches the springs when the arm is depressed - this design used two heavy-duty tension adjustable motorbike valve springs suspended on cavity-mounted bolts. When the trem arm (sourced from a bicycle saddlebag holder) was pressed down the trem plate compressed the springs giving a positive, subtantial feel. With almost straight string pull to the tuners and a shallow 4 degree headstock angle causing very little friction through the black bakelite string guide, this system allowed excellent return to pitch for the non-locking unit. For its time, it was nothing short of revolutionary.
And of course when it came to the electrics, the egghead May family just couldn't keep it simple. Brian had originally wound his own pickups; they´d sounded good, but under string-bending the unhelpful north/south dual polarity of the small horseshoe type magnets he´d used created a nasty rustling noise. After spending three guineas at the Burns shop in St. Giles´ Circus, Brian became the proud owner of a set of the fabled metal cased Burns Tri-sonics.
First, the coils were potted in Araldite epoxy to help reduce their microphonic tendencies. Next the pickups were direct mounted to the body, and after much experimentation the pair eventually settled on an arrangement where each pickup passed to two small 2-position slider switches, the first row, nearest the pickups, being on/offs for each pickup and the second row allowing phase reversal for each. These switches and the volume and tone pots were all mounted on a shielding-aiding aluminium plate underneath the black perspex scratchplate.
This wiring allowed a number of different pickup configuations and tones. With two or more pickups on together the sound combined in series - not parallel, as on a Strat, for instance - increasing the output and giving the guitar its famously fat, resonant humbucking tone when combined with a treble booster into a Vox AC30. But when May flicked up one of the phase reversal switches it cancelled out the low end harmonic, creating a chiming clean tone or the trademark sreeching lead sounds typified by the Bohemiam Rhapsody solo (neck and middle pickups on
together, out of phase).
Its owner has decribed the guitar as a cross between a Strat- and a Les Paul-sounding tone. Add the humbucking options and the wide travel trem and the Red Special displays a remarkable number of elements of the modern metal guitar. Not bad for two inexperienced guitar builders working in a spare bedroom in the early ´60s...
(Credit to source for this article: Guitar Magazine Vol.10 No 2 , October 1999)
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