In 2009 I unwittingly bought what was very likely a fake item (an LP album cover autographed by all four members of Queen) from a reputable high street dealer of signed memorabilia in a popular U.K. tourist destination. After I had sought specialist advice from a knowledgeable collector and challenged the retailer, he accepted the item back and refunded my money in full.
Since then I have acquired a number of items signed by Brian May from official sources: Barry Moorhouse at Brian May Guitars, an in person meet and greet at the SSE Hydro arena in December 2017 and direct from his equipment technician, Pete Malandrone via charity auction at an enthusiast meet.
My YouTube content for January is a brief video lasting less than five minutes which aims to provide some insights and tips on how to identify and obtain authentic items signed by the Queen band members, Brian May, Freddie Mercury, Roger Taylor and John Deacon.
Some of the content has caption credits in video (thanks to Jamie Rail, Shawn Leaver and Brian May via Instagram). I have extracted clips from other YouTube channel content under the fair usage policy. Photographs of signed Queen memorabilia also came from the following sources:
In my last YouTube video of 2023 which is ten minutes in duration, I take you on a 21 year journey through Brian May’s musical activities after he stopped touring and recording with the original Queen band members. I tell you the stories behind the souvenir sixpences minted to mark notable occasions illustrated with close up shots of all the coins and related video footage.
Supreme Queen tribute band guitarist Luke Timmins invited me to attend their concert at The Town House in Hamilton near Glasgow, Scotland on 30 September 2023 and back stage to film their set-up and sound checks. I was able to take advantage of empty gallery seats immediately overlooking the stage on the band’s left (right from the audience’s perspective) to film the band close up. Check out the video below which is 1h 46m in duration; each song is time indexed from the description.
Please check out my highlights package of the 2023 U.K. Brian May Red Special enthusiast meet-up on Saturday, 7th October 2023 and read the full report illustrated with 25 photographs here: https://dsgb.net/events/tvh2023/
Attended by 60-70 enthusiasts, the event has been held at Theale Village Hall near Reading in Berkshire since 2017. The theme of this year’s meet-up was “Good Company” which reflects the friendliness, trust and respect in the global Brian May enthusiast community.
To celebrate twenty years of working with Brian May, Andrew Guyton brought three guitars never seen or rarely seen in public: the spade, the 12/6 doubleneck and scalloped fretboard guitars. He also exhibited the “Badger” semi-acoustic and three customer guitars based on the original Red Special including Pete Malandrone’s semi-acoustic archtop and Nigel Knight’s heavily customised Ruby Special. These were all demonstrated by Luke Timmins, lead guitarist with the Supreme Queen tribute band using his KAT Brian May live rig.
Many other Red Special guitar variants were on display which had been made by amateur and professional luthiers in addition to custom guitar hardware and musical equipment including Deacy amplifier replicas and various Vox AC30 amplifiers.
Billed as “a concert through time and space” and a “dazzling tribute”, let me welcome you ladies and gentlemen behind the scenes at the Supreme Queen tribute band concert at The Town House in Hamilton near Glasgow in Scotland on Saturday, 30 September 2023. I cover band set-up, full song sound checks and some concert footage is included.
Supreme Queen are Scott Maley as Freddie Mercury on lead vocal, Luke Timmins as Brian May on lead guitar, Allan Brown as Roger Taylor on percussion, Alan Wallbanks as John Deacon on bass guitar and Ben Marshall representing Spike Edney on keyboards. Check out their website for futher details about the band:
This video introduces you to some of the main settings that Brian May uses on his TC Electronic G-Major 2 digital effects processor units when playing Queen songs live so you can reproduce them for yourself with the same or similar equipment. It includes pictures of Brian May’s KAT touring and guesting mini rig at Allerton Hill and my ex Andy Barnett KAT Brian May rig being set up and tested by Pete Malandrone at Allerton Hill in June 2013 as well as Brian’s TC Electronic G-Major 2 global settings and user presets. You can read more about all the content featured in this video and download the settings in Adobe PDF format here:
Credits to Nigel Knight and Pete Malandrone for the pictures taken at Brian’s equipment store at Allerton Hill featured in this video. I have a standing agreement with Nigel to reproduce KAT media with appropriate credit. Thanks to other Red Special enthusiasts for validating and publishing G-Major 2 settings in the public domain including Luke Timmins (guitarist with U.K. based Queen tribute band Supreme Queen), Iain Angell, Pete Michalowski and Mark Reynolds.
This brief follow-up video to my series on building a replica of Brian May’s legendary Deacy amplifier illustrates some of the tones you can get from it when paired with a Red Special guitar and suitable treble booster. Thanks to Ricky Peraza of Miami, FL for demonstrating my DIY Deacy and Luke Holwerda of Phoenix, AZ for recording the clips.
The final part of this three part series on making a replica of Brian May’s Deacy amplifier covers the design and construction of a replica of the vintage loudspeaker cabinet. I also cover final assembly of the all the component parts.
As the year comes to a close, we learn that Dr Brian Harold May, C.B.E., musician, songwriter and animal welfare advocate has received a richly deserved knighthood in the New Year honours list for services to music and charity and becomes Dr Sir Brian Harold May C.B.E. The full citation is included below.
Brian May is an acclaimed musician and songwriter, founding member of the rock group Queen. In 2020 he was named Greatest Guitarist of All Time by Total Guitar Magazine. Queen’s performance at Live Aid in 1985 is acknowledged as the greatest live set in history. Brian famously opened the Queen’s Golden Jubilee celebrations in 2002 performing live on Buckingham Palace roof – and 20 years later returned to open the Platinum Jubilee concert atop the Victoria Monument. He is also an accomplished astrophysicist, now attached as stereoscopist to many NASA space exploration teams. He re-established the London Stereoscopic Company in 2008, was co-founder of Asteroid Day in 2015, for the protection of Earth from asteroid strikes, and was Chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University from 2008-2013. His work defending Britain’s wild animals led him to found the Save-Me Trust in 2009, which is his continuing passion, campaigning for the rights of foxes and badgers, and hosting an active wild-life rescue operation.
I would like to thank you for supporting Doug Short Guitar Blog by visting this website, watching my YouTube videos and subscribing to my YouTube channel. I have produced 17 videos this year to augment the traditional words and pictures style of dsgb.net and present Brian May guitar and equipment related content via a more engaging medium. Most of these have been technically challenging to produce and some (BHMOHM and Tri-Sonic pick-ups, Deacy amp for example) have required investment amounting to a few hundred pounds on top of the US$100 per annum cost of keeping dsgb.net on line so please help me sustain this endeavour by liking and subscribing. The next milestone is to reach the 1,000 subscriber/4,000 watch hours milestone to join the YouTube Partner Programme (YPP). I have also populated my Pinterest and Instagram accounts with photographs from project activities and events I attended so please check them out too.
Looking at the year in numbers, dsgb.net has been on line for two years and had 16,650 visitors and 95,500 views in 2022 representing 48% and 92% increases respectively over calendar year 2021. I am very pleased with this growth for what is a niche interest website. My YouTube channel has grown from 360 to 791 subscribers enjoying 125,227 views and 4,319 watch hours. After a much-needed seasonal break from my main line of work developing and delivering simulator training at EDF Energy’s Torness nuclear power plant, the main challenges for 2023 are to first complete the series of three videos on building a Deacy amp replica and then realise other ideas to give fresh insights into, and inspire others to start their own Brian May related guitar and equipment projects.
In part one of a series of three videos about making a replica of Brian May’s legendary Deacy amplifier, I briefly discuss the origins of the Deacy amp circuit (salvaged from a vintage transistor radio that John Deacon found in a London dumpster in 1971) and what Queen tracks Brian used it to record on. I then move on to talk about the new Knight Audio Technologies (KAT) amplifier board kit and the other component parts required including suitable vintage and modern woofer and tweeter loudspeakers and the cabinet itself. I finish by introducing the only official Deacy amplifier replica which was made by Knight Audio Technologies between 2011 and 2019.
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