Hi I was wondering if someone could help me identify the effects Brian May used on the song Bohemian Rhapsody. I am using the Fender Super Champ XD amp and the Digitech RP90 Multi Effect Pedal. Thanks!

Info from the man himself here;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmbTA9CAr30

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z85YsUAU6pA

jamesg1213


Info from the man himself here;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmbTA9CAr30

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z85YsUAU6pA

Awesome. Thanks for sharing!

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).

Thanks Bit. I have been trying to play around with my Digitech Multi Effect RP90 Pedal and tried a combination of the '63 Vox AC30 Top Boost amp with an AC30 TB Jensen Blue Back 2x12 cabinet with the eq treble boosted and some chorus effect to it. I am still missing the distortion sound feel to it though. All I have to work with right now is my Fender Super Champ XD and my Digitech RP90 Multi FX Pedal. Seems I always have a problem trying to get a close sounding tone based on the original song. Thanks for the suggestions so far. Any more tips, suggestions or pointers would be great!

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

In one of the 'Under Review' documentaries, they go into his setup a fair bit. The biggies are:

1. Custom made guitar, with pickups that were popular in the 50s with British Invasion and Surf type bands often, nothing like modern ones.
2. He used a six pence I guess it was, for a pick, which has a serrated edge and is quite small and of course very stiff, so he would have been picking very close to the strings with a serated metal pick, which is going to sound nothing like a plastic pick.
3. Vox AC-30 wide open of course. You can hear the huge hum in the example videos above.
4. A treble booster pedal for leads often.

You can buy a repro of the guitar and treble booster, if you really want to go there.  He had phase switches for each pickup on that guitar I think, so he could get various in and out of phase settings and often use out of phase on the middle and kneck pickup for leads, for that fat, screaming sort of tone, with the treble boost often to drive the AC-30 even harder and to get more top end.

A dime might do well enough for a pick that would provide similar effect. And you can hear that hard scraping attack quite a lot that you would only get with something like that.

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.

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.



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.

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.