The Red Special is an electric guitar owned by Queen guitarist Brian May and custom-built by May and his father. The Red Special is also sometimes named in reviews as the Fireplace or the Old Lady, both nicknames used by May when referring to the guitar. A guitar that would define May's signature style, the Red Special was purposely designed to feed back. May has used it on Queen albums and in live performances since the late 1960s. The name Red Special came from the reddish-brown colour the guitar attained after being stained and painted with numerous layers of Rustins' plastic coating. The name Fireplace is a reference to the fact that the wood used to make the neck came from a fireplace mantel.
Read more about Red Special: Manufacturing, Appearances, Replicas, Variations, Restoration, Unusual Features, Specifications
Famous quotes containing the words red and/or special:
“...deep down, deeper than everyday gets me, I am still one of them and will be till I die. In my heart and soul I belong to the lot and the red wagons and the Big Top.”
—Josephine Demott Robinson (1865–1948)
“An indirect quotation we can usually expect to rate only as better or worse, more or less faithful, and we cannot even hope for a strict standard of more and less; what is involved is evaluation, relative to special purposes, of an essentially dramatic act.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)