Anyone who’s a fan of Queen or Brian May will have heard of the famous Guild replicas of the red special. New to collection a Guild ’90s Brian May, Limited Edition, Signature Series. In the Spring of 1964, Brian May, then a student at Hampton, Middlesex, England, and his father, an electronics engineer, worked on a project to make an electric guitar. After two years of experimentation and construction the “Red Special” emerged. This guitar, Brian’s principal instrument, has been an important part of “Queen’s” great sound. In 1984, the Guild guitar company and Brian worked closely together to produce 316 close counterparts of the “Red Special”, which had to retain the quality and special features of a custom-made guitar. It is a unique guitar-different in feel, sound, features, appearance, and character. The new edition, with custom made parts such as pick-ups, tremolo, and the design and shape of the neck and body, is almost a perfect copy of Brian’s own guitar. So you may say that the new re-issue is a spitting image of the “Red Special”. Guild only produced a limited amount of this new edition. Components and Feel As with the original version, this body is made out of hand-picked mahogany that was cut specially to show the beauty of the grain. The fingerboard is made out of high-grade ebony with low frets for fast easy action. The neck is wider than most electrics (1 13/16 at the nut) allowing plenty of space for string bending and full control of chords with the left hand. Two full octaves are fretted with cut-a-ways allowing easy access to the 24th fret. The inlaid fret markers give a lot more guidance than on most guitars. The head of the guitar is shaped so as to position the tuning pegs almost in line with the strings, giving it minimum bending at the nuts. The graphite nut positions the strings horizontally, and a ‘zero fret’.
