A painstaking exercise in matching the pattern of wood grain on an electric bass guitar to video footage of the band Queen has tripled the instrument’s value as it comes up for auction.

The bass guitar, a 1986 Warwick Buzzard owned by The Who’s late bass player John Entwistle, was originally forecast to fetch £10,000.

But auctioneers have increased that figure to between £20,000 and £40,000 after analysis of the instrument’s distinctive wood grain proved it to be the same instrument played by Queen’s bassist John Deacon at the band’s landmark 1986 Montreux Pop Festival performance.

The grain-matching technique also revealed the bass is the same one played by Deacon in Queen’s 1986 video for their top 20 hit Friends Will Be Friends.

The bass guitar is now thought to have been lent to Qu

See Full Page