The “Blue Special”

Inspired by Brian May’s Red Special

This is another one built by me from top to bottom. It is inspired by the pickups and switching scheme of Brian May’s Red Special, hence the name.

Instead of a blade switch for pickup selection, like a standard Strat, this one has a set of 6 slider switches, two per pickup. The upper switch turns its pickup on or off (allowing all three pickups on at once, which isn’t possible with a standard Strat pickup selector) and the second switch changes the pickup’s polarity to put it in-phase or out-of-phase with the neighboring pickup.

I built this with:

• A Fender Maui Blue body, alder.
• The neck was a raw licensed Fender maple on maple “C” profile. I sealed and finished it with Birchwood Casey Tru-Oil and did the logo myself.
• Schaller Locking Tuners
• Cream pearloid pickguard, custom cut, omitting one knob hole and the blade switch cut out in order to use the little slider switches instead.
• All wiring was done by hand and was a serious pain in the ass. Those switches are tiny.
• The pickups are Brighton Rocks from GFS. They are fantastic pickups. If you know anything about typical strat pickups, you’ll notice those pole pieces are HUGE. They’re actually the type of pole pieces normally used in P-Bass pickups, and unlike typical strat single coil pickups in which the polepieces are steel with an AlNiCo (Aluminum Nickel Cobalt) magnet underneath, those pole pieces actually are the AlNiCo V magnets. The sound is much “beefier” than your typical single coil pickups.
• Fender USA tremolo bridge, 6 point, with full size brass block for extra warmth and sustain.
• Chrome barrel knobs with pearl inlay.
• Chrome etched neckplate.