Burns or Brian May Sig. ver?

[QUOTE][QUOTENAME]NTL wrote: [/QUOTENAME]A couple of (pretty bad) pictures of my Burns BM which I have just finished modifying.
All done by hand except the Tremelo which I bought from RS Guitars. I must say that its a vast improvement on the original, it now stays in tune perfectly no matter how hard you use the trem and I routed out most of the body under the scratch plate like the original RS, which makes it far more resonant.
The only real difference to the original is the scratch plate is slightly larger on order to hide where the old Trem was.

See what you think....[QUOTE}


Nice Job, I always was a bit pissed off about the pick up surrounds. Thats prob on the next money spinning model Brian has in store for us next year.

I sold my Brian May sig back in April, it was too fat, great looking guitar but a couple of things that annoyed me were the the bottom E kept snapping, I solved that by changing the saddles around, I found the neck far too fat, it sounded dull and the 'gold' hardwear, ie tuners, pickup covers and tone/volume controls started to turn silver after only 2 months use. I wasnt impressed, I can say I owned one which was a dream as a BM fan, but Id never buy another unless I won the Lotto and it was a Fryer model.

Id sooner play my 13 year old Jackson.


http://www.queenzone.com/queenzone/mp3.aspx?Q=11960

Nice pics there.


That's a bad story there BMWig. Btw, the neck is supposed to be wide as that's how Brian made it. In fact, I think you'll find that they actually lessened its width for the line. I personally love the wider neck. I get a good grip and feeling when playing. Thin necks seem kind of lesser to me now.


I'll be posting some sounds I recorded on a different board. I'll make sure and put the link up here, too.

Adam.

Well I'm amazed by your bad luck there mate... I haven't snapped a *single* E string on this thing yet!!!

I find I actually adapt to different neck sizes pretty quickly, the BM felt pretty wide when I first picked it up in the shop, but I'm able to sort of hop from that to a Fender pretty easy these days.

"I'm in love with my guitaaaar".

Yeah, are myself and Zeb just lucky? I've had no problems at all. And the ones like the breaking strings, buzzing frets and tremelo issues seem so minor now I've experienced them.

Adam.

You know.... the fret buzzing was one of the most common things I'd been warned about before I took the Burns plunge.. and oddly enough, either I'm desensetised, or it's gone by itself because I never did any adjustments to the action.

I can't say enough nice things about the RS... I guess it's just a match, for me?? Hehe. My one complaint? It doesn't feel right when I play it sitting down (and I'm a big fan of sitting on my arse and playing guitar).

I'm dying to put up some videos of the thing on Youtube, I want to share the love!

I posted this on the Red Special forum over at Brianmayworld.com - http://www.savefile.com/files/276642 (3mins at 3.24MB btw!)

It actually comes from my 20 minute mess about I did to test recording with my laptop. So, this file was just to give an idea of what the SharpFX Retro booster sounded like with the Brian May guitar. Just some messing about on guitar really!

Adam.

I've had no problems with my Burns BM model.

I did adjust the action, because I changed to lighter strings and I like to mess around with the setup on my guitars!

I had a bastard with the buzz on the top E and it went in to be set up a further 2 times but still kept buzzing. The guitar tech said that the buzz was no worse than on his £1300 PRS but it annoyed the crap out of me cos my £200 strat, my £400 Epiphone and £800 Jackson have never buzzed as much as that!

I got the BM version from A-Strings (wimba)...it is a great guitar. It stays in tune nicely and I have yet to break a string...those gold strings rock though!! Go for The BM sig.

And I will recommend getting some Maxima Gold Strings from Wimba (A-Strings) through his webstore on Ebay...I got really great service when I purchased my guitar from him.

I buy my strings from Wimba, and I live on the other side of the pond.

Yeah, the optima stuff is great. I remember having a couple of sets and it somehow helped my playing. Even playing faster. I didn't tell anyone about it and then my brother's mate who plays bass and also bought a set of optima strings for his bass said, he felt like he played better on them, too!

So, I think they're worth investing in. But they're so damned expensive. I can't really justify the cost of them at the moment, so I just stick with my usual Daddario's. I've tried ALL types on the market and I feel Optima's are 1st place while I still come back to Daddarios in 2nd place.

Adam.

I F***ing hate Daddarios, have just re-strung mine with a set of 9s as that was all that was available and instantly remembered how shite they are.
The Optimas are great if you can afford them otherwise buy Roto's or Ernie Balls.

Each to their own.

[QUOTE][QUOTENAME]NTL wrote: [/QUOTENAME]I F***ing hate Daddarios, have just re-strung mine with a set of 9s as that was all that was available and instantly remembered how shite they are.
The Optimas are great if you can afford them otherwise buy Roto's or Ernie Balls.[/QUOTE]

Could you elaborate? They haven't let me down yet. Have you ever done a blindfold test to see if the sound was worse when using them, things of that nature?

I'm just curious, I've never seen a brand of string that one could call shite.... unless we're talking the *really* cheap ones.