Brian May Red Special Guitar Neck CAD Design Walkthrough

In this video, I demonstrate and discuss how I designed the neck for my Brian May Red Special guitar build using TurboCAD 2016 Professional CAD software. I begin by explaining how I worked up overall design sketches using known measurements and design details including the assumptions I made, then move on to cover the detail on the headstock, main section and tenon separately. The video is illustrated with TurboCAD screen recordings and animated renders of the 3D objects.

I created my interpretation of Brian May's Red Special by studying photographs in the public domain and the X-ray images taken in 2003 at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London; I used known measurements of commercial replicas and made some reasonable assumptions and judgements to fill in any gaps. I have collated known information about The Red Special and its commercial replicas, the Super and Special made by Brian May Guitars on my website, https://dsgb.net. Links to all references mentioned in this video are included below.

Throughout the video I alternate between imperial and metric units for simplicity's sake but please note that the Red Special would have been designed in the imperial system of weights and measures, as would have been the convention in 1960s Britain. I worked in the metric equivalents of imperial dimensions in TurboCAD and used a lookup table in Microsoft Excel to convert between the two.

Brian May’s Original Home Made Pickups (BHMOHM)
   • Brian May Red Special Original Guitar Pickups  
https://www.theredspecial.com/2018/01...

How Did Brian May Design His Red Special Guitar?
   • How Did Brian May Design His Red Special G...  

Premier Guitars Rig Rundown Video (see time index 17:44 for the close up views of the neck heel)
https://www.premierguitar.com/videos/...

Visit the official home of the Red Special, maintained by Simon Bradley:
https://www.theredspecial.com

Brian May Guitars (BMG) Super Specifications:
https://shop.brianmayguitars.co.uk/bm...

Video Sequence Index
00:00 - Introduction.
01:25 - Guitar body and neck overall design sketches.
02:22 - Guitar neck design sketches (general overview).
03:03 - Headstock outline construction from first principles.
04:47 - Neck design sketch construction (plan view).
06:26 - Neck design sketch construction (side elevation).
07:27 - Neck thickness discussion with reference to the BMG Super.
08:25 - Neck heel discussion with reference to Premier Guitars rig rundown video.
09:26 - 3D CAD object construction introduction.
09:49 - 3D CAD object construction (headstock lozenge shape).
11:09 - 3D CAD object construction (headstock volute).
12:03 - 3D CAD object construction (main section).
13:32 - 3D CAD object construction (tenon).
14:21 - Outro.

Please check out my other YouTube videos and website, https://dsgb.net which cover a wide range of topics on Brian May's guitars and musical equipment.

#BrianMay #RedSpecial #dsgb #DougShortGuitarBlog