#still fucking blows my mind that he and his dad built an electric guitar#by themselves#like….#how.#i mean i know how but.#HOW.
Honestly though like I am continually amazed by the fact that Brian and his father managed to build a functioning electric guitar and I hope you don’t mind me stealing your tags and Going Off on a bit of a rant, because frankly I don’t think this fandom actually appreciates this point enough.
I mean for start, they built this in 1963. The concept of an electrified guitar, in general, wasn’t even really a thing until the 1930s but models like the Fender Telecaster and the Gibson Les Paul weren’t commercially available until the early 1950s. Which means that Brian and his father built, from scratch, an electric guitar only about fifteen years after electric guitars became available to the masses.
And it goes without saying that they did this with no instructions and without any prior experience of building electric guitars. The Red Special isn’t Attempt #14 either, it is literally their first attempt. And not only that but they built in a ton of features that weren’t even standard to mass-produced guitars at the time (like the phase switches and the design of the whammy bar). Again, on their first and only guitar they built and with nothing to use as a guide.
Also, let’s not forget that they built this guitar because they were literally too poor to afford to buy one. (If I have to read one more shitty so-called “journalist” insinuate that they built the Red Special because of their egos I am going to scream. There is a world of difference between “We can do better than that” and “We have to make this ourselves, and if we’re going to put in the effort we’re going to make it as best we can.”)
They had to put an incredible amount of engineering into the guitar. Not just the electronics to actually make it function (which, again, included unique features not found on other guitars) but even with something as simple as building the body of the damn thing, to make sure it could survive the stress of the string tension and being played. And they technically made it semi-acoustic to boot, instead of having a solid body piece, which arguably was the more difficult option for them to go with.
Everyone knows that the guitar was made from odds-and-ends, and we can all rattle off quips about the hundred year-old fireplace, the knitting needle, the mother-of-pearl buttons… But just stop and consider how absolutely amazing it is that they used those things and the guitar works. They weren’t using high-end materials, they weren’t building this with specialized equipment, they used what they had and what they could find and it fucking works.
And not only does it work, it has worked for over 50 years, with an incredibly low amount of maintenance and with the overwhelming majority of it still made of its original parts. And when the main restoration was conducted in 1998 they sourced primarily original and period-specific parts and supplies, to change as little as possible.
This guitar has been around the world, it has been used on every Queen album, every solo project of Brian’s, every tour he has ever been on, and 50 goddamn years later it still sounds amazing and is still the guitar that Brian uses first and foremost for everything he does.
And it was built in two years, by two people who didn’t know what they were doing, with whatever meager supplies they could find, less than two decades after electric guitars were first commercially available, on their very first attempt.
And if that isn’t the most unbelievable, incredible, downright amazing thing you have ever heard, then I don’t know what to tell you. Because it still absolutely blows my goddamn mind every time I stop to consider the sheer magnitude of what Brian and his father managed to achieve.
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turnnoffyourmind
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