EZ Effects

Having been a big fan of Brian May's guitar sounds for many years, I decided to try out the May Queen as my first build.

This was a pretty easy build, being low on the component count and having only one pot.  You can see this is my first build from the haphazzard layout, the paper under the board, and the 2 extra holes in the box ;-).  I socketed the transistors to prevent damaging them with the soldering iron.  The extra SPST switch is for the optional "high-cut" capacitor shown in the original schematic.  With this switch I can engage the "high-cut" when using single coil pickups and leave it off for humbuckers.

The front graphic is supposed to look like Brian's "Red Special" guitar.  My wife built the image in Photoshop, we then printed it on some dark t-shirt transfer paper, ironed it on to the box, and then sprayed several coats of glossy acrylic with UV protection.

The box sounds great!  Of course it is not exactly the "Brian May Sound" (whatever that is), but it gives you a taste of what it must be like to play through a treble booster and a Vox AC30 turned up to "11".  It has tons of gain, produces nice feedback, and cleans up a little when you back off the guitar volume.  I find myself playing the solo from Bohemian Rhapsody as soon as I turn it on.