Red Special Meetup 2024

The Hidden Android?

Trying to faithfully reproduce an iconic vintage guitar is a challenge best suited to those with patience and an eye for detail. Gazing at photographs of the Red Special's tremolo cavity, I noticed a peculiar detail, which I've circled in the image below:


The area between the circles and the knife edge is chiselled out to accommodate the steel block on which the guitar strings and tremolo arm are mounted.

The area in the middle, between the two circles, is deeper to accommodate the tremolo springs. It was then chiselled deeper for each of the two springs.

I noticed that the circled corners themselves are not square. In fact, they're concave.

I mentioned it to my friend and fellow obsessive, Matt Netherwood of Yonderbosk Creations, and he sent me a picture from a series in the Red Special book.


I had seen a similar photograph previously. In their pursuit of a frictionless bridge, Brian and his father Harold had incorporated a large metal roller into an earlier incarnation of the Red Special guitar build. I had assumed they'd scrapped it and started over.

But as I eventually learned about Brian and Harold, and from my own guitar making efforts, you just don't do that. You patch and work around. And, as Matt kindly shared with this illustration, that's exactly what they did:



The orange circle would have been carved through the top half section of the guitar, into the oak block in the bottom section. The area on the right side would have been filled in with a semi-circular wood biscuit, upon which a new rectangular top oak block and knife edge would have been attached to the top half section. The result would be exactly as we see in the first picture above.

Replicating this feature in my first Red Special build, I noticed that it resembles the Android logo! The entire thing is permanently hidden when the guitar body is screwed and glued together, but I know it's there: the Hidden Android.