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Queen<\/a>\u2019s\u00a0Brian May<\/a>\u00a0has gifted\u00a0Black Sabbath<\/a>\u2019s\u00a0Tony Iommi<\/a>\u00a0with a left-handed replica of his classic Red Special guitar.<\/p>\n The original Red Special was assembled from\u00a0scratch\u00a0in the early 1960s by May with his father Harold, as he was unable to afford a major brand.\u00a0Built with mahogany from an old fireplace mantle and an oak fingerboard with mother-of-pearl buttons, it\u00a0remained\u00a0May\u2019s primary guitar on stage throughout Queen\u2019s success in the \u201870s and \u201880s and became synonymous with the band\u2019s sound.<\/p>\n Now, Iommi has revealed that May has given him a customised left-handed replica of the model, thanking him in a social media post\u00a0on Tuesday (December 9).<\/p>\n Alongside photos of himself playing the instrument, Iommi wrote: \u201cHuge thanks to my best friend\u00a0@brianmayforreal\u00a0and master builder Andrew Guyton\u00a0@guyton_guitars\u00a0for this incredible left-handed Red Special replica. Andrew personally delivered it last week \u2013 a true gift from Brian, two years in the making. Christmas came early!\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p><\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n Guyton added:\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s\u00a0built with the exact vintage construction of Brian May\u2019s original Red\u00a0Special, but\u00a0shaped to match Tony\u2019s iconic Jaydee Old Boy neck. Features a built-in treble booster and authentic vintage-style pots and pickups to replicate the classic tone.\u201d<\/p>\n Earlier this year, May teamed up with Gibson to launch a new limited-edition 12-string acoustic guitar, the Brian May SJ-200. Only 100 were made available, with a design including AAA rosewood back and sides, a AAA Sitka spruce top and a two-piece AAA maple neck.<\/p>\n\n This week,\u00a0May\u2019s wife Anita Dobson implied that despite Queen working on\u00a0new music\u00a0with Adam Lambert, it was unlikely that they would resume full-scale touring<\/a>. \u201cThey will do little bits and bobs, but they\u00a0won\u2019t\u00a0do those big tours,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n May suffered a minor stroke last year<\/a>, which he said came on \u201call of a sudden, out of the blue\u201d.\u00a0He said it left him without any control over one of his arms and described it as \u201ca little scary\u201d.<\/p>\n As for Iommi,\u00a0he gave a surprise performance at the press night for the Birmingham Royal Ballet\u2019s performance of\u00a0Black Sabbath \u2013 The Ballet\u00a0<\/i>in London in October.<\/a>\u00a0He treated the live audience to the guitar solo from \u2018Paranoid\u2019,\u00a0with May also in attendance at the show.<\/p>\n Iommi\u2019s longtime bandmate and friend\u00a0Ozzy Osbourne passed away from a heart attack in July at the age of 76<\/a>.<\/p>\n The post Queen\u2019s Brian May gifts Black Sabbath\u2019s Tony Iommi with his version of left-handed Red Special replica guitar<\/a> appeared first on NME<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Queen\u2019s\u00a0Brian May\u00a0has gifted\u00a0Black Sabbath\u2019s\u00a0Tony Iommi\u00a0with a left-handed replica of his classic Red Special guitar. READ MORE\u00a0\u2018Queen days\u2019: Brian May reflects on his rock \u2018n\u2019 roll journey The original Red Special was assembled from\u00a0scratch\u00a0in the early 1960s by May with his father Harold, as he was unable to afford a major brand.\u00a0Built with mahogany from an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37430,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-art"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-10-25 20:46:22","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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