Brian May Guitars

Red Special

Electric· Brian May handmade icon — three Tri-Sonics in series

Brian May Guitars BMG Red Special — the modern production of the homemade guitar Brian May built with his father in 1963 from old fireplace wood. Three Burns Tri-Sonic single-coils wired in series with individual on/off + phase switches per pickup, 24-fret neck with zero fret, ebony fingerboard with mother-of-pearl dots, and a unique knife-edge tremolo. The series-wired pickups stack output for the trademark Queen orchestral guitar tone — May famously plays through Vox AC30s with a sixpence coin instead of a pick.

Best strings for Brian May Guitars Red Special

Character-matched pairings, ordered by fit

GHS

Boomers

10–46 · $5.49

GHS Boomers 10-46 on Red Special — same brand David Gilmour uses on his Strat, applied to the Red Special. Slightly compressed midrange and rounder bottom-end than Slinkys make Boomers a strong alternative when running the Red Special into Big Muff fuzz à la Queen's heavier orchestral guitar passages.

Ernie Ball Paradigm 10-46 on Red Special — coated long-life option for stage gigging Red Special owners who can't restring before every show like Brian May's tech does.

The Paradigm coating preserves the Tri-Sonic harmonic complexity for 8-12 weeks of nightly play.

The default Red Special spec — Brian May has used 9-42 for his entire career, and Super Slinky is the universal 9-42 anchor every Red Special player starts with before deciding whether the Optima Gold premium is worth 4x the price.

D'Addario XL 10-46 on Red Special — for players who want slightly more tension than May's signature 9-42, especially when running the trademark 24-fret series-wired Tri-Sonic configuration through Vox AC30 cleans where 10s give the Brit-rock crunch a meatier midrange than the lighter signature gauge.

Community Picks

Unusual but loved by real players — against-the-grain choices

Optima

24K Gold Brian May Signature 2028 BM

9–42 · $32.99

Character mismatch — guitar character and string character do not match. This is intentional, not an error.

Optima 24K Gold BM Signature on the Brian May Guitars BMG Red Special is the only string set Brian May himself collaborated to design with Optima of Markneukirchen, Germany. As the Brian May Guitars official shop describes the partnership: the BM Signature is "specially developed with and for Brian May" — nickel-plated steel plain strings coated in 24K gold, insensitive to tarnishing, lasting 3x longer than typical strings. Brian May currently uses Optima Gold 9-42 on his Red Special.

Conventional wisdom: every Red Special replica gets standard Ernie Ball or D'Addario 9-42 — the 'whatever's cheap' approach for tribute players. Mismatch logic: the gold plating delivers exactly the cutting top-end and corrosion immunity Brian May needs touring for over 50 years across humid stadium gigs — and the slightly compressed midrange of gold-plated nickel pairs uniquely with the Red Special's three Burns Tri-Sonic pickups wired in series, the trademark Queen orchestral guitar tone.

Best for serious BMG Red Special owners chasing authentic Queen-era 'Bohemian Rhapsody' / 'We Will Rock You' tone; skip if you don't have a Red Special or won't tolerate the 4x retail cost over standard 9-42 sets.

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