The Guitar Plugged · Guitarist Index
Brian May
Queen
1968–present
Rock · Progressive
One homemade guitar, a sixpence, and the most orchestral guitar sound in rock.
Main guitar
The Red Special — built with his father from a fireplace mantel
Signature sound
Treble-boosted Vox AC30s, layered harmony guitars, silvery sustain
Era
1968–present
Influence
94 / 100
Genre
Rock / Progressive
Why they matter
One homemade guitar, a sixpence, and the most orchestral guitar sound in rock.
May's tone is one of the very few in rock that is genuinely unique rather than merely well-executed, and it is unique because virtually nothing in the chain is standard. He built the guitar himself as a teenager, plays it with a sixpence coin instead of a pick, and runs a treble booster into a wall of Vox AC30s.
The result is a compressed, singing sound that sits between a guitar and a wind section — perfect for the layered guitar orchestras of 'Bohemian Rhapsody' and 'Killer Queen', where he arranged harmony parts like a composer rather than overdubbing riffs.
He is also an astrophysicist with a doctorate in interplanetary dust, which is not relevant to the playing but is very hard to leave out.
The sound
Treble-boosted Vox AC30s, layered harmony guitars, silvery sustain
Bohemian Rhapsody
The heavy section is a stack of Red Special tracks harmonised in thirds — a guitar choir rather than a rhythm track.
Killer Queen
The bell-like Deacy Amp tone used for the solo's harmony parts, unlike anything else on record.
Brighton Rock
Live delay counterpoint: he plays against two delayed copies of himself in real time.
We Will Rock You
A single distorted, midrange-heavy lead over silence — the tone has nowhere to hide.
Recreate the sound
Want this tone on your rig?
ToneMD translates Brian May's sound into settings for the amp, modeler or plugin you already own.
Prescribe my tonePowered by ToneMD
Style & technique
How you recognise the playing
Guitar orchestration
Three- and four-part harmony guitar arrangements written as ensemble voicings, not doubled leads.
Coin picking
A sixpence used as a plectrum for a hard, articulate attack with almost no pick flex.
Delay-based counterpoint
Tape and digital delay used live to play harmony against himself in real time.
Sustaining, vocal lead lines
Melodic solos built to be sung back — 'Bohemian Rhapsody' being the obvious example.
The rig
Instruments, amplification and effects
- The Red Special (1963, self-built)
- Guild and Burns replicas for touring
- Vox AC30 (multiple, always on the same settings)
- Deacy Amp — a homemade amp built by John Deacon
- Dallas Rangemaster / John Deacon-built treble booster
- Foxx Foot Phaser
- Boss chorus and delay
- Three Burns Tri-Sonic single-coils wired with individual on/off and phase switches
- Sixpence coin as a pick
- Series/parallel pickup switching giving unusual phase combinations
Essential listening
Where to start
- 011974
Killer Queen
Queen · Sheer Heart Attack
- 021974
Brighton Rock
Queen · Sheer Heart Attack
- 031975
Bohemian Rhapsody
Queen · A Night at the Opera
- 041976
Somebody to Love
Queen · A Day at the Races
- 051977
We Will Rock You
Queen · News of the World
- 061986
Who Wants to Live Forever
Queen · A Kind of Magic
Career landmarks
The moments that mattered
The Red Special
A guitar built with his father from household materials that became one of the most recognisable instruments in rock.
Queen's guitar orchestras
Multi-part harmony guitar arrangements that made 'no synthesizers' credits on Queen albums a point of pride.
1985
Live Aid, 1985
Twenty minutes widely considered the greatest live rock performance ever televised.
The legacy
Lineage
Influenced by
Influenced
Adjacent players
More from the archive
The player who turned amplifier noise into a musical language.
The virtuoso who rewrote the vocabulary of rock guitar.
Session-hardened producer who built rock guitar as an architecture, not a solo.
The player who translated Chicago blues into British rock volume.
The restless technician who kept reinventing what an electric guitar could be.
The master of the long note — space, sustain and perfect note choice.