Brian May - Back To The Light Tour (1993)
Note: this is the "typical" set of instruments for Brian's 1993 tour. The BTTL
tour actually started in November 1992 with a different guitarist and backing
singers but that's another story.
Percussion
Yamaha 9000 Drum-Kit. Consisted of 2 x 16" x 20" Bass Drums, 61" x
14" Snare Drum, 6" x 16" Tom Tom, 8" x 18" Tom Tom, 13" x 9" Tom Tom, 14"
x 10" Tom Tom, 16" x 16" Floor Tom, 18" x 18" Floor Tom.
Cymbals were 15"
Formula 602 Heavy Hi-Hats, 20" 3000 Medium, 18" 3000 Crash, 18" 3000 Heavy
Crash, 8" 3000 Splash, 24" 3000 Heavy Ride, 20" 3000 Heavy Crash, 18" 3000
Crash with rivets, 20" 3000 China, 20" 3000 Crash with rivets, 10" 3000
Splash, 6" Bell, all Paiste. Hardware consisted of Premier 250 Bass Drum
Pedals, Yamaha Hickory Drumsticks, Remo Pinstripe Heads.
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Bass guitar
Most likely a custom Sei bass (not Ibaņez or Aria as we had
previously thought). Played by Neil in all the shows.
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Electric guitars
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Brian's main guitar was the Red Special (first photo). He also
used his Guild replicas (second photo), you can see it in
Brixton during Love Token and Headlong (that was one of
the early prototypes of the Guild 90's edition) and during Bohemian
Rhapsody and Resurrection reprise (one of the Guild 80's
edition, probably the same guitar he used as backup during the Magic
tour). Jamie's main guitar was a Levinson Blade R4 (third
photo). It's very similar to a Fender Stratocaster but if you look
closely at the guitar during WWRY, you can see a white logo
while Fender uses only gold, silver or black logos. Also the colour
(misty violet) is typical for Blade guitars. In Let Your Heart Rule
Your Head Jamie used (besides his Gibson acoustic) also a Fender
Telecaster (fourth photo). He had more guitars though; while in Brixton
he used the two previously mentioned guitars, in Barcelona he had a
Gibson Les Paul (fifth photo) and another guitar that could be a
Guild Red Special replica.
In November 1992 (5 dates) Mike Caswell was hired as the second
guitarist (instead of Jamie Moses). Judging from the poor bootleg
videos that we have, he probably had a Fender Stratocaster in
red/white finish and two Ibanez guitars - in sunburst and blue
finish.
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Acoustic guitars
Brian kept trusting the Ovation Pacemaker 12 String Acoustic Guitar
(left photo), Jamie had a 1965 Gibson J-45 acoustic guitar (right
photo).
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Keyboards
Spike had four keyboards. One of them was a Roland EP-77 digital
piano, two others were Korg M1. No idea abouth the fourth one.
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