Brian May's Lessons Learned for Your Guitar Rig
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- Опубликовано: 7 фев 2025
- How do you get the Brian May guitar tone? At face value, it seems somewhat simple: a treble booster, a Vox AC30 and a Brian May Red Special. Bingo! Well, let's not move so fast here, because there is far more to it. In this episode, I will go through every single relevant detail in order to inch ever closer to that glorious Queen guitar sound.
I've spent an entire month working on this video, and I've learned far more than I had anticipated. The gear is one thing, but the knowledge that comes with using the gear and how to best extract every inch of tone imaginable, is quite an unexpected turn.
Sit back, relax and enjoy this in-depth look into one of Rock N Roll's most iconic guitar players.
GEAR USED:
2017 Vox AC15c1 loaded with a WGS Black&Blue
Northern FX V2 treble booster
BOSS GE-7
Thermion Breakthru
Shure SM57
Superlux R102
IK Multimedia Amplitube Brian May
I'm a Stringjoy artist, and play their set of Broadways on all my Electric guitars.
I play the 10/13.5/17/28/38/50 on all my Gibson and Epiphone. I play the 9.5/13/16/26/36/48 on my Strat and Telecaster.
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Good to see this - my first time watching, really impressed with how much can be done with just the right choices and not collecting too much unnecessary stuff that won’t be needed. Thanks for sharing this great information and keeping it simple- nice work! ☮️
Dude!!! Amazing video, so detailed and thorough! Please keep them coming! And thanks for my little cameo 😂
Thanks for helping out.
Been listening to Night At The Opera these 50 years later. What a work of art. They all great musicians..
One can learn a lot from Brian May - not only in terms of rig!
When you said " The history behind it... " That orangey looking guitar ... I think that THAT is Mark Reynolds'original replica! And, Brian and Greg prefer the Dallas arbiter version of the AC 30; that is also the one that Greg based his mayday pedal on, which I have! IT IS SPECTACULAR!!!!!!!!!! PERFECT!!!!!!!!!! And, I also have, from the same mate of Mark's, a perfect replica of Brian's Foxx foot phaser, and a replica of the boss CE1, by way of the boss CE20! And about the delay, 800/1600 may be the"official" time settings, but 900/1800 is ACTUALLY BETTER! The AC15, as you have discovered, is actually NOWHERE CLOSE TO AN AC 30! And, as I've told you, I think, he removed every unnecessary tube from the amps, and only played through the normal channel, with ALL of the tone turned OFF, with the treble booster, And what I told you about his pickup wiring and configuration! The AC15 has a resonant frequency about an octave higher than the AC30, and pretty much sounds TERRIBLE!!!!!!!! And, you could get a BAG of sixpence on eBay for next to nothing! And, As I told you about the treble booster, the one I told you about is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL to the SOUND! The Nigel Knight doesn't get it! It lacks the clarity! The bc149 gets amazing distortion all the way up, while MAINTAINING clarity of the individuals of chords, while with the guitar turned down, it gives you the sparkle! The booster you're using here makes everything sound MUDDY! Brian ALWAYS puts the booster right after the guitar! I don't think that the EQ's are very relevant... That is probably STUDIO STUFF! But, for THAT, you'd have to ask MARK! And come as far as him possibly using matchless... The people who started the company, who left vox, tried to tempt him with their DC30, with all of their bells and whistles, but he ABSOLUTELY DIDN'T LIKE IT! It just didn't sound right! I got this from a guy named Dan, who worked at guild, and was there when they made the original copy back in the '80s! He KNEW What he was talking about! And your tone was too harsh and brittle! I think you may have possibly ignored my directions about turning the tone OFF... ALWAYS... The basics for him are GUITAR, BOOSTER (BC149), AC 30 NORMAL CHANNEL, ALL TONE OFF! Jamie is good, but, again ... Mark Reynolds! Crucial to the restoration; has been to Brian's house, played his stuff, and Brian has played his replica! Brian knows him on sight, and, NO ONE that I know of is more reputable than he IS!!!!!!!!!! INCLUDING JAMIE! Mark played ALL of his guitars, including the old lady, and Greg's replicas, WAY BEFORE Andrew guyton, and played through the Deacy!!!!!!!!!! You SHOULD LISTEN TO ME! But... Overall... GOOD JOB! 😺😸 And, you ABSOLUTELY CANNOT use an SM57 on an AC 30! You need a big diaphragm mic, like the u87! If you use an SM 57, it will sound like treble, fizzy NOISE! I've experienced it live, and, you can absolutely TRUST ME on that!
It’s super easy to get his tone. 1) Because the Burn’s pickups are wired in series, they are humbuckers, so use a bridge humbucker if you have it or the bridge/middle setting on a strat with more gain than the humbucker. Using a fuzz or distortion pedal into an amp with its overdrive channel on or turned up on the clean channel. Turn the tone and volume knobs up and the gain knobs until you have a loud, mildly distorted tone, then roll the guitar volume down until the tone cleans up.
Great vid Jon. Cant wait til the Blackmore one comes out.
Coming soon!
@@TheToneLounge
Before the 90's Blackmore used a 69 strat with the middle pickup removed and hotter pickups( Quarterpounders ) with a Hornby Skewes treble booster...
Then he switched to Marshall heads live and used his Tapemachine Preamp ( voiced for mic's) into the Heads instead of the HS treblebooster
Absolutely amazing. Lots of guitar wisdom too. Never thought of a turned down treble dial for May sound. Actually to me it's still a bit scary procedure the tone hunt. Thanks for all the insight. Puppy is a labrador i guess.... or not?
I use a VOX VT40X which can be electronically loaded up using an app called Tone Room to sound like many different Amps and it has a wide selection of pedals. In the App it actually gives you a setting to get v convincing Queen tone. You can also find different files over the Internet to give you the ACDC sound etc. I have an Orange 35RT Amp which I very rarely use now as I just load up the file on the VT40X ti sound like an Orange Amp. It's an amazing piece of kit!
Well done !
Thank you
@TheToneLounge At the end you mention Blackmore and I was like AH HAAAA! - I KNEW I heard some licks from Live in Japan! 😎
Good video. Brian also used a cocked wah extensively. Especially on early albums.
Thank you for the video. Very much appreciate everything you put into this. Yes, creating the brain may sound it's a very interesting topic is this? I can see why he needs some money EQ pedals it would be interesting to explore putting a phaser in series or parallel with a delay pedal or having two phaser pedals in series or parallel with each set up slightly differently from each other.
Fractal FM 9 for example, you can put in two delay pedals in series or parallel and same with distortion, pedals and any other kind of pedal It's interesting how are things are moving? To be honest, I still think it's best to have A pedal board with signal pedals on there and also a multi effects processor board and you could have a Modular pedal board for your home studio not on the road
The boss IR 2 is an interesting pedal for your home studio and also for the road thanks again and hopefully I'll pop back to this channel again sometime soon hopefully God bless
Richie Blackmore actually used an AC30 and Dallas rangemaster! And, he also actually had the Marshalls hollowed out, and put an AC 30 into them, because he LOVES THE SOUND, BUT thought that the Marshalls looked cooler! ... This is ALSO FACT! 😸😸😺
mixer ram used for freddi at nome very good sounding board
Interesting video, however several points were very much out of date, Brian stopped using the fOXX phaser and the CE-1 chorus in the early 90's after Freddie had died, since then he's used rack mounted gear built be a number of different people but currently Nigel Knight from Knight Audio Technologies (KAT) this includes the treble booster. The fOXX was taken apart in 1982 and built into his pedalboard by Pete Cornish and used until around 91as was the CE-1. The Amps were standard AC30's in the 70's with slight mods from Pete Cornish through he 80s then Greg Fryer in the 90s and now KAT build him bespoke amps based around an AC30 design.
thanks for the additional information 👍
@@TheToneLounge No worries, BTW the main unit in his rack for delays and effects is now the TC Electronics G Major 2 that handles pretty much everything in terms of effects except the Wah which is a dunlop rack unit.
Puede ser que esté en sol mayor, pero usa como acorde de tónica el relativo secundario de sol, que es Si menor, que también tiene función de tónica.
I have tried IK simulations and even the tonex 1 pedal...getting so tired of fiddling with the software anymore. (Tonex software is a disaster!). Glad I kept a few real amps over the decades and considering ading a real AC15 or 30, or a Dr. Z to have some extra tones in the house!
... Read my reaction!
you are mysterious. Where do you get the knowledge of eq pedals before a trebble booster? Because common knowledge is that the treblebooster is always first
Experimenting! Plus the IK Multimedia plugin is a great source of inspiration.
Are you using the normal channel through the AC15C1? Because I think Brian May’s AC30’s aren’t top boost models- or the later ones, he has that circuit taken out
Yep Normal channel, I show my settings later in the video
@ an AC15 is that bright in the normal channel??!? So this means a Pathfinder 15/15R is closer in tone to an original AC30?
Raw tone better every time on the ac15.
Why didn't you go back to the clip of Brian?
Not sure what you mean?
boss japan was 6 channel no 7,spetial sound !only in japan
15 14 vox ac 15 cranked -best sound more treble open -brian sound all the rest --well ,,,
Am I the only one here who sees the irony in using sims to analyze a bunch of analogue generated results?
You think it ironic that I analyze a virtual recreation of his analog rig so I can recreate it with my analog rig?
@ kinda
ram home mixer england
?