Guitar Effect/s of Brian May on Bohemian Rhapsody?

You could start with a stack of vintage AC30's. He says in the video that he used three of them while recording Bohemian Rhapsody. Later on, he used custom-made ultra-high-gain amps. I suppose somebody must offer an authentic-sounding AC30 amp sim (I've just never heard one).

I think what you are missing is the solid state amp (the vox) into a tube microphone, probably a Neuman, this then goes into the desk, I think a solid state trident.  You'd be amazed at the subtle colour the signal chain adds to a track.  It is a fundemental of the Brian May Queen sound.

Ben

Re: the first vid I linked to - 'There was actually some extra phasing added to make it scream a little more' - I assume he means a phaser was used as well as the out-of-phase pick up position? It's very subtle if so.

Another thing to consider of course is that those earlier Queen records, like pretty much everything back then, were incredibly sparse by modern popular music standards. So there was room for a huge sounding guitar, taking up vastly more frequency range than almost any guitar would be able to do today because of piling so much stuff into tracks now. If you record something as huge and juicy as that sounded and tried to fit it into ao modern type of production, it would be conflicting like crazy.

Not that I'm against his type of sound, it's the modern, overly stuffed, overly over-dubbed sound I think should go. I say fewer, bigger sounds is much better.

batsbrew


that vox he's using is DEFINTELY NOT A SOLID STATE AMP.

the mic, is really irrelevent to may's sound.


the key is the guitar, the Deacy, the Vox AC30, and a treble booster.


actually, the key is may.


there really are no effects on his guitar.


Actually the microphone May used and the pre-amp and the desk is very important to the sound of Mays solo.  It's called the british sound and was used by The Beatles first (tubes), then Queen and then a number of Brit Pop bands in the 90's oh and I think Paul Weller.  Know thy production history.  Also I looked up when AC Vox went to a solid state amp and it would seem the early 70's so it's quite possible that May was using a solid state.  These things are super important, the OP said his guitar tone was lacking something and I deduced it was the harmonic distortion or the 2nd and 3rd harmonics that would be gleened from a particular signal path.
 
Ben
in fact, probably the only thing that would be considered an effect, is the way he uses the side of a sixpence as a pick.

there's tons of documentation out there as to what brian may used on different recordings, especially rhapsody.

Brian has his guitar plugged into the 'Normal' channel on the AC30s and has the treble booster turned up to just below the point where it goes into feedback. He has the amps turned up full and uses the volume control on his guitar to control the sound. If you want to try this setup at home, you should be aware that the AC30 is a vintage-style amp with no master volume control, so you will only get those classic sounds with everything up full (i.e. VERY loud).


The pickups on Brian's Red Special are wired in series, with phase change switches, which allow a very wide range of tones. Brian's main guitar tone uses the bridge and middle pickups together in phase, which gives a very warm rich sound, similar to that of a humbucker. He mainly uses this setting for rhythm work. For lead sounds, he often uses an out-of-phase setting, which cuts the lower frequencies and gives a much harsher 'screaming' sound. The guitar solo onBohemian Rhapsody is a good example of this tone setting.
The semi-solid construction of Brian's guitar, coupled with the amps turned up full gives a very 'live' response, which can easily lead to a ton of unwanted feeback. The solo for Put out the Fire is a great example of this. Here, Brian is using an out-of-phase pickup setting for that 'screaming' sound and has everything turned up full. The sound is right on the edge of endless feedback, but he somehow manages to control it and produce a great solo, which Brian says that he never really liked but I beg to differ!

http://www.brianmaycentral.net/play.html

http://www.brianmaycentral.net/sounds.html

I liked the video linked to in post #2 where Mr. May pretty much gets the same sound in some small room with what ever amp is sitting there.

The camera mic is hearing it.

As mentioned, it seems like the pickup combo and the chord voicing get you 90% there... and Mr. May himself mentions the addition of an extra bit of phase effect.

My guess that he just calls his signature sound "playing guitar". :-) 


best regards,
mike

Seems like there are 2 AC30s sitting there.

Thanks for the replies, I'll see what I can do with the suggestions and work something out with what I have.