Catalinbread Galileo Mk II
The Catalinbread Galileo is inspired by Brian May and Queen’s magnificent Bohemian Rhapsody – magnifico!
Brian May’s sonic signature not only comes from his home-built “Red Special” guitar. It also comes from a treble-booster pummelling bank of AC30s.
Despite being one of the world’s most celebrated guitarists, Brian May’s rig is relatively uncluttered and has been for decades.
May’s tone boils down to his home-made Red Special guitar, a monolithic wall of Vox AC30s and a treble booster.
Never turning off the treble booster, he is accessing a wide range of tones. He gets these simply by manipulating his volume knobs and pickup settings.
From his guitar to the treble booster, to the amps, his entire rig is essentially a singular musical instrument.
Designing the Galileo
Designing the Galileo with this playing approach in mind, you can roll your guitar volume back to get jangly AC30 cleans. Crank it up for searing leads and aggressive yet focused rhythm tones.
A treble-booster hitting a Vox AC30 is very special because the midrange gets super throaty with an amazing harmonic swirl.
Back the guitar volume down and that iconic Vox jangle gets magnified so it can sound angry and aggressive, yet chimey and beautiful at the same time.
It’s a complex harmonically laden tone that is very compelling to play.
Even though the Vox AC30 is mere 30 watts, cranking one up to achieve the tones that May achieves, it is very loud. Too much volume for most playing situations. Enter the Galileo!
The Galileo is a custom-tuned Rangemaster booster combined with the pre-amp section of a Vox AC30. This combination delivers the distinctive throaty mid-range and jangly crunch of Brian May.
Controls:
The controls are simple:
- Gain
- Tone
- Volume
Gain:
Just like a real AC30, this controls the amount of distortion present in the signal.
From the light-breakup “jangly” sound for which clean AC30 is known, to blistering leads when cranked. This control is highly interactive with your guitar.
Tone:
While AC30s offer up treble and bass controls, May never cared for the bass side much.
This Tone control governs the amount of treble present in the signal. It is very useful for brightening up a dark amp or post-Galileo drive pedal.
The Galileo’s Tone knob also goes way beyond the boundaries of a normal AC30 for a different flavour of Vox that leaps out of any mix.
Volume:
Turn it up, volume goes up.
Requires 9-18V DC centre negative power supply.Power usage 5mA
You can see the Galileo manual on Catalinbread’s site and find out a bit more about the company history here.
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