I have always wanted a Red Special. Queen is, without a doubt, my all time favorite band (and I am not only referring to the American standards of "we Will Rock You/We Are The Champions, etc. I mean songs like Scandal, Innuendo, Sleeping on the Sidewalk, etc.) so it would only make sense to make a Red Special.
So Cosmo and I hit the sawmill to find the perfect piece of wood. Yes, I work with Cosmo at Hetzer Guitars. Anyway, I found this big a** chunk of spalted hard maple and at that price, I couldn't go wrong.
Front of the Hard Maple
Back of the hard maple
We cut it in half using the circular saw (and that was NOT a fun task). Once we got it into two pieces, we threw it through the bandsaw and had a nice one piece blank.
Running it through the sander
I didn't have a template handy, so I just rough drew the
body shape using the Burns pickguard I picked up a few years back.
Body roughly traced (I made it too big on purpose)
Onto the rough bandsaw cut. This is NOT the final cut.
Before the cut
The Rough Cut
Waiting for the final cut (notice the new lines)
So that's the beginning of the Red Special build. I plan on it being a neckthru with Tri-Sonic pups, etc. I am NOT sure, however, what type of trem I am going to put on it. I am not going to find the correct trem used (hell, Guild, Dillon, Burns, Stars and even the new line are all wrong), so I have to improvise. I don't want a "strat" style trem, and not a Floyd, so I am looking at a few others. Suggestions there would be helpful.
