Mark Knopfler’s “Sultans” Strat (ser.-no. #68354) is from 1961. The second red Fender Strat he played with Dire Straits (ser.no #80470) was from about the same period (apart from the question in how far it was original Fender at all). For this reason I put together a table to give you a survey about the distinctive features that are different on a 1961 Strat compared  with earlier or later Strats.

	1961 Strat	before	later
Body wood	alder (ash for models in blonde)	light ash (swamp ash) until 1956	heavy ash in the 70ies
Fingerboard	slab board made of Brazilian rosewood	one-piece maple nack until 1959	curved rosewood venue from mid 1962 on, optional maple board in the late 60ies, one-piece maply neck available in the 70ies again
Pick-ups	staggered pole-pieces, formvar wire insulation, magnetic northpole on top	magnetic southpole on top in the early 50ies	enamel wire insulation from about mid 1964 on, flush polepieces from 1974 on
Pickguard	three layers (white/black/white) pickguard of celluloid, fixed with 11 screws, screw #3 between middle and neck pick-up	one layer plastic pickguard (or bakelite before 1957) until 1959, fixed with 8 screws (a few models with three layers and 8 screws in 1959)	screw #3 moved to middle pick-up in 1963, three layers plastic pickguard from 1965 on
Bridge	6 individual bridge saddles made of bent steel, separate steel tremolo block,	same	no separated tremolo block from 19xx on, diecasted bridge saddles,
Laquer	thin nitro laquer, standard was three tone sunburst (yellow/red/black), many custom colours available	thin nitro laquer, standard was two tone sunburst (yellow/black) until 1958, only a few (and rare) custom colours available	glossy polyesther finish from 1968 on
Tuners	made by Kluson, stamped with one line with “Kluson deluxe”	same	stamped with two lines with “Kluson deluxe” from 1964 on, made by Schaller from 1968 on
Pick-up switch	3-way	3-way	5-way from 1977 on
Body contours	deeply contoured - individual differences due to hand work	deeply contoured - individual differences due to hand work	becoming less contoured from the mid 60ies on
Stratocaster decal	gold “spaghetti logo” with two patent numbers	gold “spaghetti logo”, no patent numbers until 1960,	In late 1964 Fender changed to the fatter gold transitional logo,black logo from 1968 on three patent number 1963-1964, later 4 numbers
Peghead size	small	small	big head from 1966 on
String holders	one butterfly string holder	one round holder until 1956	two string holders from 1974 on
Number plate / neck fixation	4 screw number plate with stamped serial number	same (1954 models sometimes with serial number on tremolo plate)	stamped with big F from 1966on, three hole number plate from 1972 on
Serial numbers	5 digits, ca. 50 – 80,000 range	lower numbers	higher, starting with the letter L from 1964 on, 6 digits from 1965 on

Detail pictures

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Everyone who has seen Mark Knopfler live on one of his recent tours might have notived that cool-looking turquoise combo amp next to Knopfler’s Marshall cabinets. Knopfler’s second guitarist Richard Bennet also plays one. It is the Tone King Imperial.

Tone King amps are built from selected quality parts by Mark Bartel in Baltimore. Mark does all the woodworking, upholstery, and electronics assembly himself to have total control about the sound and quality of his products.

The Imperial is a two-channel combo with reverb and tremolo. The output power is about 20 watts, coming from two 6V6 tubes. The two channel make use of 12AX7 pre-amp tube, and one 12AT7 driving the reverb, just like Fender amps from the sixties or seventies. In fact it reminds me a lot of a black-face Fender Deluxe amp, which also has a similar layout and one 12″ speaker. In fact you can read on the Tone King website that the rhythm channel aims for that Fender black-face sound. A volume, treble and bass control is all that is required here. Of course the spring reverb – a fundamental ingredient of the Fender sound – works for both channels (note that on Fender amps it only affects the second channel). It will not surprise you that the reverb circuit uses the same two-spring reverb tank  (acutronics) and the same tubes like Fender.

The second channel also features just three controls: volume, tone and mid-bite – so no bass and treble control here, just on a small Fender tweed amp from the 50ies. The mid-bite adds a midrange peak and tightens the low end, controling the overdrive tone character that can be blended from Fender tweed to Marshall style.

The speaker is custom designed and labelled with ‘Tone King 33′ – manufactured by Eminence (who also built the speakers in most silver-face Fender amps in the 70ies and 80ies).

The recommended retail price for the Tone King Imperial is 1995 USD. More infos on toneking.com.

On the last (2008) tour Mark Knopfler played his red Schecter Telecaster on the song Cannibals through the Tone King Imperial, his ‘54 Stratocaster  on the song Our Shangri-La, and his signature MK Strat on Postcards from Paraguay and  True love will never fade. I guess it is the ‘king of clean’ for him and that he hardly ever uses the second channel. Another song to feature this fine amp is Hard Shoulder from Get Lucky (played on a Gretch 6120).

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Today while surfing youtube I found this rare video which I have never seen before, showing Mark Knopfler as a guest on a Brendan Crocker gig in Leeds, June 18, 1989 (the youtube video title says July 18, June 18 is confirmed and I doubt that there was a second gig one month later). For those who don’t know him, Brendan Crocker is an old friend of Mark’s, also a member of the Notting Hillbillies.

Another guest on this gig was Dire Straits keyboarder Alan Clark.

Mark plays his Pensa MK-1, and on the right side of the stage- next to the bass player – we can spot his Sultans-of-Swing amp, the brown Fender Vibrolux.

I still have a vinyl Brendan Crocker EP single with three tracks from this gig (You Don’t Need Me Here, Railroad Blues, Georgia Crawl)

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Sultans of Swing from Dire Straits’  first album is surely one of THE songs that comes to mind when talking about fingerstyle guitar playing. In addition to Mark Knopfler’s unique playing style it also features some striking Spanish-sounding elements, starting from the chord  progression itself to some flamenco-like strumming techniques – which is this blog article, or rather the embedded video, is about.

The typical flamenco stroke is called Rasgueado (the Spanish word for strumming) – a particular “roll” of your right hand fingers. I am  really no master of the true flamenco style but I realized many years ago that Knopfler plays  something like this in numerous songs, and practised something that sounds similar – my version of the Rasgueado. I can do it in two different ways: pinky first to index finger, or vice versa. Both sound different but I am not completetly sure which one Knopfler makes use of (possibly both).

The video explains how I play it. I think the idea becomes clear. So, enjoy!

PS: The rasgueado sounds great with distorted power chords, too. Give it a try!

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