The Red Special Brian May designed and built his Red special guitar when he was a teenager, and it has been his main guitar ever since. He played it on every Queen album and tour, as well as on numerous side projects. May and his dad began work on the guitar in 1962 and completed it two years later. "I was 17 when it was finished," recalls the guitarist. "I knew I wanted something that would sing and have warmth to it, but also a nice articulating edge. We tried to design a solidbody guitar that had all the advantages of a hollowbody-especially the ability to feed back in just the right way." "With any luck," says May of his guitar, "it's gonna last just about as long as I do." Guitar World 5/97 VOX AC30 Brian May uses 12, VOX AC30 Amplifiers. These Amplifiers are used in banks of four amps per row. AC30's have three channels. Brian uses the 'Normal' channel, with each amplifier on full volume '10'...the main coltrol volume that he uses as stage volume is on the guitar itself. The three banks are used just in case onebank gives out another will be used as backup. Brian May's normal configuration(at least through the 80's) was twelve AC30's. Three banks of four amps each. Only one bank of amps is in use at a time -- the other amps are backups in case of a failure. If one of the amps in a bank failed, Brian could switch to the next bank, and the third bank would warm up in case of a second failure. The original, pure, AC30 design was out of production from around 1969 to 1992 -- Brian was using old amps. Add to that the fact that AC30s are well-known for being tough on tubes, *and* the fact that Brian runs them all wide open at 10 (thus pushing those tubes even harder),and you see wy Brian wants triple redundancy. So, Brian really only uses four amps. Each one gets a different signal. One gets a straight, pure guitar signal(with preamp). The second amp gets effects -- chorus harmonizer pedal, and a few others. The third and fourth amps get the delay signals -- the third gets the first delay, and the fourth gets a delay of the delay to the third amp. Sixpence "I play with an English sixpence. It's a coin made of soft metal with a serration on the edge. I hold it loosely between the thumb and the first finger, with the first finger bent down." -Brian May 1/83 Guitar Player Magazine Effects Boss CE-1 Chorus Pedal Pete Cornish designed preamp Maestro Echoplex (Tape Delay) Units "Yeah, it's just a delay machine set on one delay...it's on one line comming back at you. I have two delay machnes so I can do three-part harmonies with that: I can play a line-maybe two or three notes-and then it comes back and I can play along with it. The delays are mostly about one and a half seconds..." -Brian May 1/83 Guitar Player Magazine ...with the help of ©Steve Stavropoulos