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Pedalboard / 013

Brian May

May's celebrated black plywood board ran the Red Special through a BC149 treble booster, a dual extra-booster box and a treadle-controlled phaser before the AC30s.

Board
Black plywood touring board
Context
Queen live touring system
Board date
Evidence
Documented equipment · 2 cited sources
Order
Source-described
Scope
Exact board snapshot
Routing
Serial path
Audited
Signal
3 units · Guitar to amplifier

Signal path / A

Black plywood touring board

Technician-documented three-unit audio chain

InputGuitar
OutputAmplifier

Documented equipment · Source-described order · Serial path

Fryer Guitars documents this exact black-board order from conversations with Brian May, Pete Cornish and longtime tech Brian Zellis. Cornish's separate July 1982 system archive corroborates that the two boosters still preceded the Foxx phaser in the successor rig; it is not treated as a photograph of the earlier board. Echoplex footswitches controlled offstage parallel delays and do not carry guitar audio, so they are excluded. A CE-1 appeared beside the black board at its final June 1982 show and is outside this representative 1977-1982 chain.

Cited sources

  1. Fryer GuitarsHistory of Brian May's treble boosters and touring pedalboards
  2. Pete CornishBrian May pedalboard, July 1982