I recently had three different 4 x 12″ cabinets here to play around with. They all were different, and they all had different speakers. In the video below I am playing various licks and chords over the three cabinets, it might be helpful to find out for yourself what you like most. But first, the candidates are:

Electro Voice EV 12

On the left you can see a birch cabinet made by House of Speakers, which we got on ebay for just 60 € (without speakers of course). It is equipped now with four Electro Voice EV 12L, the same that Mark Knopfler has in his two red Marshall cabinets. The EV 12L is not available anymore, but you normally can easily get one on ebay. It really is a workhorse that was found not only in countless guitar amps but also in PAs or stage monitors. Each of these speakers can handle 200 watts (!), the only drawback: it is very heavy. A cabinet with four of these is like a bank safe!

Celestion Vintage 30

These are in a Fame cabinet. They are very common because they are not too expensive, loud, and can handle enough power (60 or 70 watts). They are probably one of the most frequently used guitar speakers these days, although they have not that much to do with any vintage Celestion speakers (and do not even have 30 watts as the name suggests).

Celestion G12M “Greenback”

These are the current version of the legendary 25 watts Celestion speaker, as used in most cabinets from the late 60ies or early 70ies. Mark Knopfler uses these, too, he got some nice vintage Marshall cabinets in his studio. Brothers in Arms was a song recorded over these speakers for example.

The video

My verdict

I must say I like all of these. They all are different and each has some particular advantages over the others. The Vintage 30 always sounds transparent because of his strong high end, and it is also rather loud which is nice to save power (just 3 dB more volume of a speaker would require two times the power of the amp!). Having much treble always sounds nice in a shoot-out but  I think you need to be careful a bit because the treble can be too much in some situations.That Fame cabinet was returned by the way because it was not – as advertised – made of plywood (like the Marshall cabs) but of particle board. Nevertheless it is really good value for the money (a bit more than 400 € with speakers).

The Greenbacks have a very sweet sound, they never sound harsh, even if you dial up treble on the amp. On the other hand, they can appear slightly muddy compared to speakers like the Vintage 30. They also have a very deep and warm bass, and creamy mids.

The EV 12L finally seems to be a good allround speaker to me, the best of the different worlds. It has clear treble end, enough mids, and not too strong in the bass.  It might not win every shoot-out with the world’s sweetest sound, but it still makes a good figure in most situations. It is loud and can handle more power than any other speaker. Maybe Mark decided for these as the workhorses in his stage cabinets for the same reasons. If only they were not that heavy…

Your opinion?

Tell us in this poll:

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Related articles

• The iSound-ST – New sounds for the Stratocaster – Does it help to get the Mark Knopfler sound?
• Trying to recreate that Sultans of Swing sound – The gear I used on the Puresolo competition.
• The DiMarzio FS-1 pick-up of Mark Knopfler’s red Stratocaster

This post is about two of Mark Knopfler’s Fender vintage amps, the brown Fender Vibrolux – the  Sultans of Swing amp that was covered in this blog article – and the similar-sized and similar-looking brown Fender Vibroverb.

The Fender Vibrolux (model 6G11a) was one of Knopfler’s earliest guitar amps. Probably it belonged to Dire Straits’ bass player John Illsley and was used for the first demo recordings of Dire Straits, and also for the first record and for their live gigs of this time (late 1977 – early 1978). He still owns this amp and used it regularly on the last albums.

The brown Vibroverb (model 6G16) was a much later addition to Knopfler’s amp arsenal. From what I heard he got it probably in the late 1990ies with some help of John Suhr, and used it e.g. on some Notting Hillbillies gigs of that time.

Both amps were only produced for a very short time: the brown Vibrolux from 1961 – 62, and the brown Vibroverb in 1963  only. Consequently, both are ultra rare. The Vibroverb was reissued in the early 1990ies (1990 – 95).

Both amps have a lot in common: two channels with a  similar pre-amp layout (same tone controls, same pre-amp circuit), about 30 watts from two 6L6 tubes,  tremolo, and of course the same design like as all amps from the brown tolex era (wheat cover grill, brown barrel knobs, brown tolex etc.). Note that both – like all brown face amps – don’t feature bright switches. Nevertheless, the little capacitor to boost treble that is normally added with the bright switch is still present on the right channel of both amps, so imagine these amps as bright switch off for the left channel and bright switch on for the right channel.

Differences

The major differences are the speaker configuration – one 12″ Oxford speaker in the Vibrolux but two 10″ Oxford speakers in the Vibroverb – and the reverb which was only  featured in the Vibroverb. In fact, the Vibroverb was the first Fender amp with reverb, and the only one of the brown tolex era. The Fender spring reverb was available with the brown tolex reverb unit and was later – to be concrete with the introduction of the black face design – added to most of the Fender guitar amplifiers. This combination of features – two 10″ speakers with reverb and tremolo in a middle -sized tube amp – turned the Vibroverb to one of the all-time favourites for many players.

Normally it is easy to distinguish both amps on pictures because only the Vibroverb had the grill-mounted Fender logo, while the Vibrolux and other small Fender amps had no grill logo. However, Knopfler’s Vibrolux has a non-original Fender logo that was apparently added later (the logo itself looks like the ones from the black or silver face era).  Normally there is a special piece of wood for the logo screws, but not so on the Vibrolux. For this reason, the logo on Knopfler’s amp had to be moved extremely into the upper left corner of the grill so that the  logo screws hit the wooden frame of the grill front. Other optical differences: only the Vibroverb has those tilt legs on the sides, and the Vibroverb has one additional control – the reverb control on the second channel – so that is has a total of 9 controls (vol, treble, bass / vol, treble, bass, reverb / speed, intensity). This and the two 10″ speakers are the reasonwhy the Vibroverb is a bit wider than the Vibrolux.

 

The amp in the background on this video clip from is the brown Vibrolux, as the position of the logo tells.

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Related articles

• The Peavey Deuce VT – David Knopfler’s amp with Dire Straits
• The King of Clean – Mark Knopfler’s Tone King Imperial amp – Hand-built vintage technology and sound
• Rare video of Brendan Crocker gig featuring Mark Knopfler
• Sultans of Swing – The alternate single version and the demo version – sound and gear
• Mark Knopfler’s Sultans of Swing amp – The brown Fender Vibrolux
• Amps and Gear on the Dire Straits Bootleg Leeds 1978

Some of you might already have noticed that this site has its own shop since a few days. You can enter the shop with the MK-Guitar.com Shop button on the right side of the header section.

After some initial beta testing I am proud to announce that you can  buy stuff like

* Gear (partly vintage stuff)

Ernie Balls, Morleys, effects, instruments … mostly used, ocassionally new stuff
Not too much yet, but I hope to offer some more nice stuff here in the future (check regularly since these things are normally single items, first come, first serve…)

* My backing tracks

Many asked in the past for these, they are the ones I created to use on some of my youtube videos.
Note that I finally sorted out all legal aspects and can now offer these  legally here, which means with buying these you will not only support this site, but also MK himself
If some of the articles of this blog were helpful for you in the past, you can now say thank you by simply buying one or more of these tracks alternatively to the Buy-me -a-beer thing below the posts.

At the moment there are only three backing tracks (Brothers in Arms, Six Blade Knife, Wild West End) but I have the following tracks already in personal use, still need to fix some final details: Sultans of Swing (long version), Romeo & Juliet (like on recent live versions), Song for Sonny Liston, Setting me up, Southbound Again (live  “boogie” version), Down to the Waterline

* Fan Items

I have a few spare copies of some of the Dire Straits books and stuff like that.

* Planned: Own products

Yes, there are actually some nice things in the pipeline …

* Planned: Video Tutorials & eBooks

There are occasionally some weird tricks, techniques, patterns etc. which I learned to play after actually studying these things since I started to play guitar in 1979. Please understand that I am not necessarily keen on giving *everything* away for free e.g. on youtube, but I decided to offer all I know in some kind of video tutorials.  I am still working on conceptual details, watch out for things to come.

Also note that I meanwhile reduced my regular job (one reason … to have more time for things like this site…) so it makes sense that this site might generate some income – the more, the more time for it in the future

Of course there will still be more free stuff on youtube as well.

Planned: Use the shop to sell your stuff

If you now or at any time want to sell any MK related gear, you might also want to offer it in this shop. This way you might reach an interested audience and the stuff can reside there as long as it takes to get a decent price. You don’t need to ship stuff to me of course, just use the shop as a platform to find a buyer. You can contact me in case for details.

I hope you will have fun browsing the store. Use the comment function of this article for suggestions or opinions.

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Like many others,  I recorded an entry for the Puresolo competition (you could play your solo over one of the following backing tracks:  Sulans of Swing, Calling Elvis, or Speedway at Nazareth). I always find it a bit frustrating to take part in such a competition because as it seems nobody knows before who decides basing on what criteria (authenticity, accuracy, originality, creativity, …??) Anyway, as the backing track was really great – the original recording of  Sultans of Swing without the lead guitar -  I simply used the opportunity to try how close I can get to the sound of the original. Note that you had to record the guitar with Puresolo’s software which did not allow you to fix mistakes later, so you had to play the whole song in one part and leave in all mistakes, or try it again with a second attempt.

Instead of a link to the competition entry, you will find a  player module with my version  at the end of  this post, mainly because Puresolo only plays back uploaded stuff in a horrible quality (something like 64 kbs). The guitar sound is surely not 100% as the original but closer to it than any of my previous attempts so I thought you might be interested in some details on the gear and settings.

The gear I used

I first played a few guitars I had here to see which one sounds closest over the backing track. I originally felt to go for one with a maple neck, but finally my ’62 Strat with rosewood fingeroard had something the others had not. This does not mean that Mark also played his rosewood Fender Strat instead of his maple-neck, you can never be sure of these things.

I first played the guitar through a Morley volume pedal which makes the sound generally sweeter (it takes out some harshness) but for this particular recording I felt I need a lot of treble, so I left out the pedal. For the same reason a Fender Pro Reverb made it compared to an old Music Man amp. I dialed in enough treble and put on the bright switch. The sound was much brighter than I normally play here in the room but sounded alright over the backing track.

I tried an exciter effect – an old Pearl Thriller – which made the sound even shine a bit more.The last effects I used was some chorus and a limiter. Here I took a software plug-in from my Creamware Scope system.

I used an old Schoeps CM64 tube microphone which sounded sweeter than the Shure SM 57.

Which Pick-Ups?

The next decision was the pick-up combination to use. Normally you’d say Sultans of Swing was the bridge & middle pick-up. I am still not sure what it was but bridge & middle definitely did not sound right here. The middle pick-up alone was too sharp, so I ended with the neck & middle pick-ups. However, note that this Strat has a Dimarzio FS-1 in the neck position, and this pick-up has a totally different impedance than a stock Fender Strat pick-up. This is why it does not sound as nasal when you play it together with another pick-up.

I had rather thin (08) strings on the guitar, maybe too thin. I also did not more experimenting to get that little bit of distortion that seems to be on the original recording. It sounds like an abrupt clipping, maybe from the desk (?!).

So, here is the result in uncompromised sound quality (MP3 320 kbs) as I can hear it from my hard disk. Unfortunately Puresolo compressed everything down to 64 kbs directly after the upload, what a shame since some of the entries are really great!

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Simply click on the blue progress bar to make the player play a different part of the song.

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Related articles

• Speaker shoot-out for the Mark Knopfler sound: Electro Voice EV 12L, Celestion Vintage 30 & G12M “Greenbacks” in 4 x 12 cabinets
• The iSound-ST – New sounds for the Stratocaster – Does it help to get the Mark Knopfler sound?
• Alternate Sultans of Swing solo take from first album session – unheard before – exclusively on mk-guitar.com
• Rasgueado and other flamenco techniques in Sultans of Swing
• Rhett Davies and the sound of the first Dire Straits album
• Sensational: Sultans of Swing guitar track solo – without backing tracks – from Guitar Hero 5

Visitors of the recent Get Lucky tour have seen the Tone King Imperial on stage again, located between two red Marshall cabs just like on the previous tours. I had ideal seats for the two concerts I have been to (Oberhausen and Amsterdam) and tried to make out for which songs Tone King was used, actually by trying to hear if the sound comes from the Marshall cab or from the Tone King.

It seems the Tone King was used on Donnegan’s gone and Piper to the End in Amsterdam (they did not play Donnegan’s gone in Oberhausen). By the  way , on the last tour (Kill to get Crimson) it was used on Cannibals, True love will never fade, Our Shangri-la, and Postcards from Paraguay.

Here is a picture of the amp settings in Amsterdam:

I guess the clean channel (left) was for Donnegan’s gone,  while the hotther right channel might be used for Piper to the End.

Of course I am not 100% sure, and the amp might have been used on other song’s too. If you can add some info, please do so with the comment function.

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Related articles

• The King of Clean – Mark Knopfler’s Tone King Imperial amp – Hand-built vintage technology and sound
• Mark Knopfler’s amp settings on Fender Hot Rod Deluxe (Boom like that promo, Germany 2004)
• Dire Straits 1979 concert photos from Liverpool and Birmingham by Alan Perry
• Musitek guitar amp – predecessor of the Dire Straits Music Man 130HD 212
• Mark Knopfler’s Music Man HD 130 212 guitar amp
• Music Man Guitar Amps

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