BM-75 Trans Red Deluxe Series : Great guitar when it’s rewired for series / parallel

The guitar is cosmetically good with no obvious flaws. It’s structurally sound with no major problems with the neck or body. It needed setting up and I replaced the cheap nylon nut. It is great value for a £250 guitar.

But, the main issue is that it’s wired like a strat and nothing like the red special. The pickups are wired in parallel, not in series like Brian’s, and the phase switch on the middle pickup is completely redundant. It’s a very straightforward mod to rewire the middle pickup phase switch as a series / parallel switch. That gives you strat sounds in one position, with bridge and neck humbucker sounds in the other. Plus you’ve got the additional out of phase sounds.

Now it still doesn’t sound quite like the red special. But it gives you 7 sounds in the strat position and 4 sounds in the humbucker position. And it actually is a great sounding guitar with a fairly cheap and simple mod.

I went the whole hog and replaced the stock pickups with the Burns Brian May Tri-Sonics. And it now sounds absolutely fantastic. Not cheap, but well worth the money.