We open this 123 minutes worth of guitar lesson with Michael Casswell holding a Brian May 'Special' guitar. This a guitar that Brian himself brought into commercial production after building the original in his fathers woodshed. I always say "You cant beat a supportive upbringing"!.
I don't know about you but I want me one! Notice that the dot inlays on the fret board are different than usual which is just one distinctive feature. Burns pickups are another. I love 24 fret guitars too. Nice looking tremelo arm as as well. See photo which follows.
Another thing Michael points out is that Brian doesn't use a plectrum (guitar pick) but a sixpence instead. A sixpence is a round British coin of small denomination. I doubt there is any silver in it. Incidentally, Billy Gibbons of ZZTop uses a Mexican Peso coin. There may be silver in that actually.
At this juncture I personally use a medium weight, kinda large triangular plastic pick with rounded corners. The lighter picks break too quickly. I have tried other picks and some are decent. Herco Nylon flex 50's are nice! Ideally we should hybrid pick for more tones and techniques.
To tell you the truth I did not order this Brian May guitar lesson. It was a miss-ship for a Brian Setzer lesson I'd ordered. Anyway LL was great and let me keep this and sent me the Brian Setzer lesson too. Still a pamphlet would have been nice. Another thing is that Michael made us a 5 minutes long backing track and he says we should think of it as 3 different songs. OK.
Michael also clues us to the Digi-Tech Brian May signature guitar pedal, three other delays and a harmonizer. Not to mention the amps and special tone pots on his guitar. He says you can get close to the sound with old Boss compressors and dual delay pedals and to experiment. Michael seems to know everything there is to know about Brian Mays signal chain.
Brian May Page Two“All music is folk music. I ain’t never heard a horse sing a song.”
― Louis Armstrong