Brian's guitar, the Red Special is unique.
He built the guitar himself, with some help from his father, when he was still at school.
Incredibly, over 30 years later, this is still Brian's number one guitar and he regularly uses
it both on stage and in the studio.
One of the unique features of the Red Special is its series wiring for the pickups.
Most guitars are wired in parallel, but Brian equipped his guitar with 3 single coil pickups
wired in series.
Each pickup has a switch to turn it on and off and a phase change switch. This allows a huge
variety of sounds as different pickups and different phase combinations are used.
The neck of the guitar is mahogany, from an old fire-surround.
The centre block is oak and the front and back of the body are mahogany.
The construction is semi-solid with large routed areas either side of the centre block of the
body.
Brian made his guitar from the materials he had available at the time - these
included motorbike valve springs (tremolo springs), shelf edging (white binding) and mother of
pearl buttons (neck position dots).
The pickups were originally home-made but Brian was unhappy with the sound and replaced them
with Burns Tri-sonic single coils, which he potted with epoxy resin to prevent them becoming
microphonic.
Unusually for its time, the guitar features a 24 fret (2 octave) neck and a tremolo system
which will 'dive bomb' and come back perfectly in tune. It cost him just £8 to build the
guitar and it is now surely one of the most unique and valuable guitars in the world.
