Not many of today's guitarists would list their top 10 players and omit Brian May. While Queen may not be the hippest band around at the moment Brian's playing style is one of the few truly unique sounds ever heard in Rock. The key to this sound (with his talent and amps excepted) is his guitar, which most of you will also know he made about 20 years ago. When I saw both Brian May and a replica of his guitar on the Guild stand at this year's Frankfurt show it provided me with a unique opportunity to combine a guitarcheck with Brian May's thoughts on this new instrument.

When did all this come about?

"Well my own guitar I made with my father, it was very individual and had a lot of things which weren't available at the time and in fact aren't really available now. I've talked to a lot of manufacturers over the years about producing my guitar but nothing's ever happened, but then Guild wrote to me and said they would like to take up the option of producing it. This was about 14 months ago and since then we've just worked and tried out different things to get as close as we could to the original sound."

"I used to have a copy of my original guitar, made for me by John Birch, but that's gone now — it broke and is irreparable. But now Guild have made me a copy which is very close, it's 90% there and to get the other 10% it's down to individual things anyway. If you pick up two Les Pauls they're never going to be the same, are they?"

There is no doubt that Guild have done a wonderful job of reproducing Brian's guitar and making it available to the masses (well those who will be able to afford it anyway).

The shape of the guitar is probably very familiar to most guitarists with its rounded lower bouts and un-symmetrical horns. There is no doubt that it looks good and original although compared with most guitars designed today it looks somewhat conservative. The body and neck are made from Mahogany and not from a 100 year old fireplace surround as on the original, I hasten to add. The body is quite thin — approx 1¼" — and is neatly edged with a white plastic binding on top and bottom. Overall the guitar was surprisingly light although I couldn't put the balance to the test as the strap buttons had been omitted from the guitar!

Like the original guitar the Guild version has a very flat curved neck, as wide as a typical Gibson at the nut end and about average in depth (20mm approx). An Ebony fingerboard is used here, although Brian's original featured an Oak fingerboard with a plastic coating, but "if I could have got Ebony at the time I would have used it — its much better."

The fingerboard itself has quite a flat camber and features 24 medium gauge (2mm approx) frets plus a zero fret, each one installed and finished very well. The board has numerous pearl dot markers on the face giving quite an ornate but not overblown appearance.

On his own guitar Brian rewound some old pick ups; for the Guild, however, they have been designed by DiMarzio.

"Steve Blucher their chief designer has made a pickup which spreads the magnetic field to approximate the sound I have on my own pickups which were physically very fat. These new pickups are the same size as a Stratocaster pickup so you can use these as replacements." Sure enough DiMarzio offer these as the Brian May Signature pickup available in pairs at the moment. Not only do they sound original they also look good in matt black covers with no poles protruding.

To achieve his unique sound Brian had to originally wire his guitar in a rather unusual manner. Instead of wiring the three pickups in parallel, like Fender do, for example, he wired them in series, meaning that when two are switched on together, depending on the phase relationshipthey will, in fact, act in a similar manner as a humbucking pickup.

The pickups mount onto a plastic scratch plate which also holds the controls and switches in place. There are six slider switches featured here, an on/off and a phase reversal for each pickup. This actually means that far more combinations of sound can be obtained than on a Strat, for example. Obviously the bridge and neck pickups can be switched together with the middle one off — something which you can't do with a Strat. Likewise all three pickups can be switched together in various phase relationships creating subtle differences in tone.

The guitar has a volume and tone mounted low on the body away from the bridge. I was surprised to find that the volume control was actually the lower of the two controls, but his reply was equally surprising.

"That's an interesting thing for me to hear because this is really the only thing that I've played, but the volume control positioning is great for violin effects."

The headstock on the Guild follows Brian's design except, of course, it has a Guild logo and the truss rod is embossed with 'Brian May Model'.

Part of Brian May's, and indeed Queen's sound, is his use of the tremolo arm. On his original guitar once again he designed this himself with a knife edge pivot system. So successful was the design that it gave an octave drop on the low 'E' and returned to perfect pitch. The tremolo assembly on the Guild has been designed by Kahler as trying to reproduce Brian's original proved too difficult and would have been very expensive too.

"We think that the Kahler is a very good piece of work and they went to the trouble of making some special saddles for me and putting some special springs in which make it closer to the feel of my original; in fact it's almost identical."

Certainly the black-finished Kahler works well; the action lies between the slack feel of the standard Kahler and the harder feel of the new high tension springs that Kahler are offering. As with any Kahler a locking nut is fitted on the headstock but this is, in fact, optional on the Guild.

"My guitar doesn't have a locking nut and it's fine. It works because the position of the machine heads has been designed to take the strings straight through the nut. The headstock angle is enough to hold them in the nut which is, in fact, graphite. There's very little friction here (at the nut) at all."

"Something I'm also very keen on is that the nut locates the strings this way (holding the strings sideways) but the strings don't touch the bottom of the nut... this is very important."

The zero fret acts as the bottom of the nut and determines the height of the strings.

"So really you have two things as opposed to having all this happening at the nut which is always going to be a bad compromise."

I wondered if Brian had considered a roller type nut.

"Well you could but you don't need it. I put rollers here (on the saddles) on mine which is a necessity; there's no way around the fact that you have to have a lot of tension at that point."

By today's standards Brian's comments are very valid but if you remember that his guitar was designed 20 years ago you'll realise just how competent a designer Mr May senior and his son are. In fact, if Brian had chosen to design and build guitars instead of playing one the whole world of contemporary guitar design may have been very different.

Mind you Brian did not always seem as knowledgeable as one would think, certainly on the subject of the type of machine heads used on the Guild guitar.

"Er... there you have me... I don't know much about machine heads... the ones I put on mine cost me 30 bob and they're still going!! Honesty, that's what I like."

I don't know why, but when I plugged this guitar in I really expected to sound like Brian May; daft really — the guitar played clean and at a low level sounds remarkably Fenderish. Played in this way it would make a wonderful Country or Rockabilly guitar. The pickups are remarkably clear and the phase options produce all your typical 'honky' sounds and a few not usually heard. With a higher amp level or amp distortion the guitar takes on a new character, whilst so many pickups sound dull or monotonic in this area these DiMarzios retained a good tone and once again the unusual pickup and phase relations create interesting sounds. The overall tone range is extremely wide — even in the short time I had with the guitar I found myself switching from sound to sound quickly and easily, from a kind of edgy warm jazz sound to an ear splitting nasal high treble tone.

Ergonomically the guitar is well laid out, especially the switches which are easy to change. I did feel, however, that the slider switches looked a bit old fashioned, especially with their chrome mounting screws which should really be black to match the rest of the hardware. It takes a bit longer to get used to the volume and tone positions but certainly they are out of the way and obstruct neither the tremolo arm or your strumming hand movements. I do agree with Brian's point about the volume being good for violining although not in the usual sense as the control is too far away to violin and pick at the same time, but well isolated to just slip your hand down to the control — no dodging around switches or other pots.

The action on this guitar was nothing short of superb and very fast — actually I'm not at all surprised why Brian May is such a good guitarist if he's owned a guitar like this for so long! The strings fitted on this guitar are Guild's (ahem) 'Pumping Iron' Series which have extra windings on the bridge end of the string as protection against breakage from consistent tremolo use. (Just for the record Brian May uses .009, .010, .012, .016, .022, .034 — these gauges will be matched on the Guild guitar too).

The Guild guitar will come with information on Brian's unique style too; for example, his favourite settings on the guitar are with the back two pickups on and in phase.

"It brings out the qualities of the pickups — you get a lot of balls from this one because it's by the bridge and that combines with the warmth of the middle one... I've used it for so many things."

Younger guitarists will possibly be surprised to hear that Brian doesn't change his amp to follow every new development or have a multitude of distortion effects.

"I still use AC30s flat out; I don't use any distortion pedals either, just a little treble boost which I've always used to clean up the bottom end a bit. AC30s do tend to do a bit warm."

You'll be pleased to hear that Guild are also going to sell one of these little treble boosts too — basically if you want to have a sound like Brian May both he and Guild seem to have gone as far as possible to provide it.

There is no doubt that this guitar is of the highest quality and has one of the most unique designs in existence today. Brian has an ambition to test each instrument before it leaves the Guild factory.

"I'm desperate that everything that goes out is up to scratch."

Quality and attention of this kind doesn't come cheap and the relationship between the dollar and the pound doesn't help matters either, though it will be interesting to see what price the guitar sells for in the UK. We'll let you know as soon as they do.

GUILD 'BRIAN MAY' MODEL — RRP: n/a