Tanabe's May Queen is the perfect Bohemian Rhapsody Solo Sound we Brian May fans have been seeking all along!

Apr 4, 202408:00 by

Stefan Karlsson

DistortionTanabeVox Style Distortion

I’ve long had a Vox AC30 style pedal on the board - slot #19 nowadays - where the Brian May Queen sound is one of the key tones in my arsenal. Not all those Voxy pedals are equal by any means - in fact a lot of them don’t quite quite reach the Top-Boosted Heights you need to cover Brian’s more searing riffs and solos. I’ve long sought out the perfect pedal to replicate those tones - and while I’ve come close on a number of occasions - I’ve never quite totally nailed it with just the one pedal - until this May Queen came along. It has the same wonderful verve and vibrancy of my recently acquired Tanabe Zenkudo - but with Brian May’s signature tones onboard instead.

Much like with the Zenkudo - this pedal was like instantly striking gold - Toshihiko Tanabe just has that wonderful ear for tone - that empowers him to create these superior circuits.

Controls - Gain, Volume, Tone, Jali (Smooth > Rough Character), Mode : Red Hi Compression, Blue Compression, Green Rhapsody Main.

As with the Zenkudo the ’Main’ voicing - which I’ve labelled ’Rhapsody’ here - is the green mode - where Blue and Red progressively ramp up the compression - for when you’re wanting to play at lower levels of gain / saturation - and you want to achieve that same magical breakup you typically only get higher up the gain register. For me it’s the Green Mode rules - and I can cover all my preferred Queen tones with that - just adjusting the guitar volume, and the Tone and Jali knobs.

Also per its previously recently arrived sibling - the feel and dynamics of the pedal are equally superb and the pedal responds very well to guitar volume gain cleanup.

It’s incredibly easy to dial in - and has huge range on each of those dials to accommodate pretty much every style of guitar and amp - to consistently render those fabulous Brian May tones. The signature sound is pretty much instantly apparent - and you definitely get that Vox-like chime and sparkle at the top end.

I mostly have the settings with Gain @ 3 o’c, Volume @ 3 o’c, Tone @ or near Max, and Jali (Character / Texture) mostly set in and around the middle. I would imagine - depending on your guitar and amp combination of course - that the Tone and Jali controls would be the ones you adjust most regularly. All modes sound fabulous - especially of course the Main - ’Rhapsody’ Green LED one.

There’s not much more to say really - this one is equally fabulous for me as the Zenkudo, and I will be ordering the Santanabe now very shortly - to complete my Tanabe Overdrive / Distortion Trifecta. Where I will follow up with the Sunkudo Burns Buzzaround style Fuzz - a little later one! As I always mention - I have around 300+ builders that I need to share the love around for - and I try not to put too many eggs in the same basket - at least not typically over such a short period - while it does seem to happen more frequently nowadays! When I hear something I love - I always want the full set!

Note that the Santanabe logo is about to be slightly streamlined on all newer pedals - including my intended one

As before - I love the use of Abalone / Mother of Pearl facia plate - which dances with different colours as light hits it from various angles. Those pedals really look every bit as magical as they sound. Really solidly built with fantastic attention to detail.

My only tiny niggle here is that neither of the really cool plastic shell boxes these pedals come in survived the journey - while they obvious did their job in protecting the pedals. The first plastic case had a massive crack across most of its lid, and the recent one - which housed the May Queen was shorn of its plastic hinges. I would have kept those boxes for incidental nik-naks and item storage otherwise - but neither one arrived intact. Here's hoping that the one which houses the Santanabe makes it the whole way in one piece!

The Tanabe May Queen is priced at $330 with $40 shipping fee for USA / UK - probably covering most parts of Europe too. I have to pay an additional circa £60 in customs and import duties to get each pedal into the UK - so these are certainly relative dear, but for me still decent value for the joy they deliver. You can read up further details on the Tanabe.TV English Info Page. And if you want one of these you need to send an email with address and PayPal details to tanabe.tv@tanabe.tv. Tanabe-San makes all of these to order - so it can take up to a week or so to get yours made on current timings, where mine typically arrive within about a week-and-a-half of payment - at least so far!

I recently got treated to a virtual tour of Henry Kaiser's Gear Collection and I would have to assume he has one of the largest Tanabe pedal collections out there - including the super rare Sushikudo Edition, his own suggested Super Dumkudo (2 Dumkudos in series in single enclosure), and a slew of personal custom editions - including one with a cartoon avatar graphic, and another with a graphic of Gojira / Godzilla - all really cool. I'm still in the process of working my way into Toshihiko Tanabe's affections - while I'm well aware that I will never get to the status of his best friend Henry Kaiser - those two have visited each other in their respective countries, and have known each other for decades!

In any case it's nice to be sort of part of the Tanabe family now in some way. I knew this would be an expensive journey for me, but it's been so worth it!