Brian May is one of the most immediately identifiable guitarists of all time, and part of his sonic mojo comes from his unique 6-string—the Red Special. Let's explore this instrument to learn how it works and discover how you can mod a production or custom replica to make it even more versatile. Once you understand the electronics, you'll even be able to rewire a Strat to Red Special specs.
Red Special history.
Guitar freaks know the story about May's main axe and how as a kid he built it with his father in the early '60s. From the moment May started playing with Queen—filling stadiums worldwide and recording monster hits—the Red Special's distinctive tone has been essential to his music. What makes this guitar different?
The Red Special boasts three single-coil pickups, Telecaster-style master volume and master tone knobs, and individual on/off and phase switches for each pickup. Like some older Danelectros, its pickups are wired in series rather than in parallel, and this yields a very fat, loud sound.
Photo by Chris Kies
The theory behind series wiring is that the ground wire of one pickup is connected to the hot wire of another pickup. As a result, they become a kind of compound pickup with one ground and one hot for both.
When wired in series, the pickups' impedance (resistance) is summed and the output is very high. (To learn more about series wiring, read "Stratocaster Parallel/Series Switching.")
May's original Red Special is constructed with unusual materials.
The body is made of oak and blockboard, and topped with a mahogany veneer. Its center block and neck consists of an unknown wood taken from an old fireplace mantel, and the fretboard is oak. The result is a kind of semi-acoustic guitar that's almost impossible to copy, but a standard Strat isn't a bad foundation.
If you're intrigued with the idea of configuring a Strat à la May, Image 1 is the wiring diagram for a stock Red Special. Naturally, you can physically arrange the on/off and phase switches to your personal taste.
Pickup details.
A big part of May's tone comes from the Red Special's Burns Tri-Sonic pickups. Though Tri-Sonics are single-coils, they're wider than standard Stratocaster pickups. This means if you want to install a replacement set of Tri-Sonics in your Strat, you'll have to enlarge the pickup holes in the pickguard and reroute the pickup cavities in the body. Fortunately, Burns also offers a drop-in replacement for Strat pickups called the Mini Tri-Sonic. These pickups sport ceramic magnets and a chrome cover, and have a typical DC resistance of around 7k ohms and an inductance of approximately 1.9H.
The Tri-Sonic's unique construction gives it richer harmonics than a standard Stratocaster pickup. In fact, a Strat-sized P-90-style pickup will get you closer to Brian May territory than a Strat pickup. But to get as close as possible, Tri-Sonics are the ticket.
The Red Special boasts three single-coil pickups, Telecaster-style master volume and master tone knobs, and individual on/off and phase switches for each pickup.
Instead of a common 5-way pickup selector switch, May uses an on/off switch for each pickup. This arrangement gives him seven different combinations from the three pickups. Besides the five well-known Strat combinations, he can also pair the bridge and neck pickups, as well as engage all three pickups. His Red Special uses slide switches, but mini-toggle on/off switches work just fine.
A passing phase.
On his Red Special, May also incorporates an individual phase switch for each pickup, so he can reverse its phase in any pickup combination. When two pickups are in phase, they work together and sonically reinforce each other. When they're out of phase, two pickups work against one another, cancelling many frequencies. The resulting sound is the "leftovers" from these cancellations.
Before we go any further, let's review two things about switching pickup phase: You don't have to engage two phase switches—reversing the leads of both pickups puts them back in phase again and thus yields a stock sound. And switching the phase of a single pickup has no audible result. For example, the bridge pickup by itself sounds the same whether it's switched in or out of phase. You can only get an out-of-phase sound when you use two pickups together and only one of them is out of phase.
So why add all these phase switches?
Consider this: There are two ways you can use the bridge and middle pickups together with one of them being out of phase with the other. The bridge pickup can be in phase and the middle out of phase, or the other way around. Each configuration delivers different harmonic content, especially when you're playing with distortion. The difference is subtle, but audible, and May is known for tinkering with this option a lot. It's an important part of his signature tone.
May typically plays with heavy distortion, pushing his amps hard with those series-wired Tri-Sonics. His out-of-phase sounds are an excellent choice for cutting through the mix, and this whole circuit is perfect for his playing style.
To get close to the Brian May tone, there are several more things to consider: He plays with very light strings (.009–.036) and uses an old sixpence coin as a plectrum. He also runs his guitar into a treble booster and a wall of Vox AC30s. There are other details, but to enter the May zone without breaking the bank, use thin strings, pick with a coin, plug into any Rangemaster Treble Booster clone, and use a Vox amp—ideally an AC30.
There is a Vox Brian May signature amp (the VBM-1), which was designed to mimic his studio sound and has a built-in treble boost circuit. Though the amp is no longer in production, it sometimes shows up used on eBay.
There are a lot of mods out on the web for Red Special replicas and clones, mostly designed to coax more sounds out of the guitar. My favorite (Image 2) is by John Hewitt, an Australian guitar tech and the mastermind behind the GuitarNuts website. This mod incorporates series/parallel pickup switching, leaves all stock wiring sounds untouched, and only requires one additional switch, which acts as a master series/parallel switch. Parallel switching of the pickups offers more traditional Stratocaster tones. Compared to the series wiring, it has reduced output but delivers enhanced clarity, twang, and top end.
All you need for this is a 4PDT mini toggle or slide switch. A mini toggle switch should be easy to acquire, but finding a 4PDT slide switch can be more difficult. Using the new switch is fairly simple: Dial in a pickup combination of your choice—for example, bridge-plus-middle—and you'll hear them connected in series (the stock wiring). If you want a more Strat-like sound, flip the new switch and both pickups are now wired in parallel for a more traditional tone. Flip it again and you are back to the stock series wiring.
This isn't an easy wiring project, so be methodical and don't rush through it. The third pickup wires (not shown in Image 2) from the Tri-Sonics are twisted together and soldered to ground as shown in Image 1's stock wiring (represented in green).
And that's it! Until next time, keep on modding!
[Updated 9/28/21]
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Duane Denison of the Jesus Lizard, EGC Chessie in hands, coaxing some nasty tones from his Hiwatt.
The Jesus Lizard’s sixth album, Blue, served as the band’s final statement from the frontlines of noisy rock for the next 26 years. By the time of their dissolution in 1999, they’d earned a reputation for extreme performances chock full of hard-hitting, machine-like grooves delivered by bassist David Wm. Sims and, at their conclusion, drummer Mac McNeilly, at times aided and at other times punctured by the frontline of guitarist Duane Denison’s incisive, dissonant riffing, and presided over by the cantankerous howl of vocalist David Yow. In the years since, performative, thrilling bands such as Pissed Jeans, METZ, and Idles have built upon the Lizard’s musical foundation.
Denison has kept himself plenty busy over the last couple decades, forming the avant-rock supergroup Tomahawk—with vocalist Mike Patton, bassist Trevor Dunn (both from Mr. Bungle), and drummer John Stanier of Helmet—and alongside various other projects including Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers and Hank Williams III. The Jesus Lizard eventually reunited, but until now have only celebrated their catalog, never releasing new jams.
The Jesus Lizard, from left: bassist David Wm. Sims, singer David Yow, drummer Mac McNeilly, and guitarist Duane Denison.
Photo by Joshua Black Wilkins
Back in 2018, Denison, hanging in a hotel room with Yow, played a riff on his unplugged electric guitar that caught the singer’s ear. That song, called “West Side,” will remain unreleased for now, but Denison explains: “He said, ‘Wow, that’s really good. What is that?’ And I said, ‘It’s just some new thing. Why don’t we do an album?’” From those unassuming beginnings, the Jesus Lizard’s creative juices started flowing.
So, how does a band—especially one who so indelibly captured the ineffable energy of live rock performance—prepare to get a new record together 26 years after their last? Back in their earlier days, the members all lived together in a band house, collectively tending to the creative fire when inspiration struck. All these years later, they reside in different cities, so their process requires sending files back and forth and only meeting up for occasional demo sessions over the course of “three or four years.”
“When the time comes to get more in performance mode, I have a practice space. I go there by myself and crank it up. I turn that amp up and turn the metronome up and play loud.” —Duane Denison
the Jesus Lizard "Alexis Feels Sick"
Distance creates an obstacle to striking while the proverbial iron is hot, but Denison has a method to keep things energized: “Practice loud.” The guitarist professes the importance of practice, in general, and especially with a metronome. “We keep very detailed records of what the beats per minute of these songs are,” he explains. “To me, the way to do it is to run it to a Bluetooth speaker and crank it, and then crank your amp. I play a little at home, but when the time comes to get more in performance mode, I have a practice space. I go there by myself and crank it up. I turn that amp up and turn the metronome up and play loud.”
It’s a proven solution. On Rack—recorded at Patrick Carney’s Audio Eagle studio with producer Paul Allen—the band sound as vigorous as ever, proving they’ve not only remained in step with their younger selves, but they may have surpassed it with faders cranked. “Duane’s approach, both as a guitarist and writer, has an angular and menacing fingerprint that is his own unique style,” explains Allen. “The conviction in his playing that he is known for from his recordings in the ’80s and ’90s is still 100-percent intact and still driving full throttle today.”
“I try to be really, really precise,” he says. “I think we all do when it comes to the basic tracks, especially the rhythm parts. The band has always been this machine-like thing.” Together, they build a tension with Yow’s careening voice. “The vocals tend to be all over the place—in and out of tune, in and out of time,” he points out. “You’ve got this very free thing moving around in the foreground, and then you’ve got this very precise, detailed band playing behind it. That’s why it works.”
Before Rack, the Jesus Lizard hadn’t released a new record since 1998’s Blue.
Denison’s guitar also serves as the foreground foil to Yow’s unhinged raving, as on “Alexis Feels Sick,” where they form a demented harmony, or on the midnight creep of “What If,” where his vibrato-laden melodies bolster the singer’s unsettled, maniacal display. As precise as his riffs might be, his playing doesn’t stay strictly on the grid. On the slow, skulking “Armistice Day,” his percussive chording goes off the rails, giving way to a solo that slices that groove like a chef’s knife through warm butter as he reorganizes rock ’n’ roll histrionics into his own cut-up vocabulary.
“During recording sessions, his first solo takes are usually what we decide to keep,” explains Allen. “Listen to Duane’s guitar solos on Jack White’s ‘Morning, Noon, and Night,’ Tomahawk’s ‘Fatback,’ and ‘Grind’ off Rack. There’s a common ‘contained chaos’ thread among them that sounds like a harmonic Rubik’s cube that could only be solved by Duane.”
“Duane’s approach, both as a guitarist and writer, has an angular and menacing fingerprint that is his own unique style.” —Rack producer Paul Allen
To encapsulate just the right amount of intensity, “I don’t over practice everything,” the guitarist says. Instead, once he’s created a part, “I set it aside and don’t wear it out.” On Rack, it’s obvious not a single kilowatt of musical energy was lost in the rehearsal process.
Denison issues his noisy masterclass with assertive, overdriven tones supporting his dissonant voicings like barbed wire on top of an electric fence. The occasional application of slapback delay adds a threatening aura to his exacting riffage. His tones were just as carefully crafted as the parts he plays, and he relied mostly on his signature Electrical Guitar Company Chessie for the sessions, though a Fender Uptown Strat also appears, as well as a Taylor T5Z, which he chose for its “cleaner, hyper-articulated sound” on “Swan the Dog.” Though he’s been spotted at recent Jesus Lizard shows with a brand-new Powers Electric—he points out he played a demo model and says, “I just couldn’t let go of it,” so he ordered his own—that wasn’t until tracking was complete.
Duane Denison's Gear
Denison wields his Powers Electric at the Blue Room in Nashville last June.
Photo by Doug Coombe
Guitars
- Electrical Guitar Company Chessie
- Fender Uptown Strat
- Taylor T5Z
- Gibson ES-135
- Powers Electric
Amps
- Hiwatt Little J
- Hiwatt 2x12 cab with Fane F75 speakers
- Fender Super-Sonic combo
- Early ’60s Fender Bassman
- Marshall 1987X Plexi Reissue
- Victory Super Sheriff head
- Blackstar HT Stage 60—2 combos in stereo with Celestion Neo Creamback speakers and Mullard tubes
Effects
- Line 6 Helix
- Mantic Flex Pro
- TC Electronic G-Force
- Menatone Red Snapper
Strings and Picks
- Stringjoy Orbiters .0105 and .011 sets
- Dunlop celluloid white medium
- Sun Studios yellow picks
He ran through various amps—Marshalls, a Fender Bassman, two Fender Super-Sonic combos, and a Hiwatt Little J—at Audio Eagle. Live, if he’s not on backline gear, you’ll catch him mostly using 60-watt Blackstar HT Stage 60s loaded with Celestion Neo Creambacks. And while some boxes were stomped, he got most of his effects from a Line 6 Helix. “All of those sounds [in the Helix] are modeled on analog sounds, and you can tweak them endlessly,” he explains. “It’s just so practical and easy.”
The tools have only changed slightly since the band’s earlier days, when he favored Travis Beans and Hiwatts. Though he’s started to prefer higher gain sounds, Allen points out that “his guitar sound has always had teeth with a slightly bright sheen, and still does.”
“Honestly, I don’t think my tone has changed much over the past 30-something years,” Denison says. “I tend to favor a brighter, sharper sound with articulation. Someone sent me a video I had never seen of myself playing in the ’80s. I had a band called Cargo Cult in Austin, Texas. What struck me about it is it didn’t sound terribly different than what I sound like right now as far as the guitar sound and the approach. I don’t know what that tells you—I’m consistent?”
YouTube It
The Jesus Lizard take off at Nashville’s Blue Room this past June with “Hide & Seek” from Rack.
Once the news of the Oasis reunion got out, Sadler Vaden hit YouTube hard on the tour bus, driving his bandmates crazy. The Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit guitarist has been a Noel Gallagher mega-fan since he was a teenager, so he joined us to wax poetic about Oasis’ hooks, Noel’s guitar sound, and the band’s symphonic melodies. What are Sadler’s favorite Oasis jams? And if he ever shares a bill with Oasis and they ask him onstage, what song does he want to join in on?
