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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• 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

When I started playing the guitar in 1979, spiral guitar cables were common. Many players favoured these spiral – or coil(ed) – cables because it is very handy not to have meters of cables lying on the floor between your feet and your effects. The spiral cable shortens automatically to a few feet, while it allows distances up to several meters when stretched out, and they don’t wrap themselves after turning around a few times such as normal cable does. Last not least, I always found they look cool.

I am not really sure why they got out of fashion a few years later, so much that for decades  it was almost impossible to get a long high-quality spiral cable. I was surprised to see them back a few years ago, when Vox presented their Vintage Coil Cord. Fender also has one again. In fact the Vox cable looks pretty much exactly as the cable that Mark Knopfler played live when he started Dire Straits, so I tried to get hold of them. Unfortunately it turned out that they were not available in Germany, and shipping them from the US meant high additional costs. I finally got some from the German distributor that were left over after a music fair. I use them live and for recording since then.

What I like about this cable is the look, the feel, and the sound. It is really true that different cables sound different. This is not vodoo thinking but based on a few technical facts about pick-up design. With these cables the sound becomes smoother with some nice bite in the upper mids. I am not sure if this has to do with Vox’s multi-core design forthis cable – different cores for different frequencies – or if it is just the result of the electrical specs. Anyway, it sounds good.

The sound of the cable is especially important when using two of these, before and after a passive effect, like Mark Knopfler apparently did in the late 7oies. With an active effect device, only the cable before the device matters, but with e.g. the Morley volume pedal, both will affect the sound, to be concrete, the capacity of both cables adds and transforms the pick-up’s resonance peak, adding some high mids.

The cable is very reliable. I guess spiral cables were phased out because they can be damaged when you step on them very hard, thus bending the coiled cable to some radius smaller then allowed, which makes the cable break or the shielding loose. The Vox cable, however, is very strong so that it will not be harmed when stepping on it (something I nevertheless try to avoid). Even after using it for a few years now, none of mine makes noises when moving the cable, or shows any other problems.

I recently got some of these great cables which I can offer at a great price in this site’s online shop. Check them out!

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After almost 40 years, Fender recently dropped the 15o SL strings from their product range. For me bad news because the 150 SL (pure nickel, 008, 011, 014, 022, 030, 038) are the strings of choice on most of my Stratocasters.

08-strings had their popularity peak surely some decades ago. They were favoured especially among country players since thin strings made all those fancy banjo-style rolls and licks easier and faster. When players like Stevie Ray Vaughn promoted  heavy strings, 08 became rare and were often no longer on stock in most smaller shops.

I started to experiment with strings thinner than 09 amost 20 years ago. Two things I especially liked about them were the thinner g- string because with vintage-style Strat pick-ups (staggered pole pieces) an 016 always seemed too loud for me compared to the 011 b-string, and I like the sound of the thinner wound strings, especially the d and a strings.

It was however just a few years ago that I got a hint that Mark Knopfler might have played 08s on the early Dire Straits stuff.

By the way, Fender also dropped the 010-038 set some time ago (010, 013, 05, 026, 032, 038) which I personally liked better than 010-013-017… .

At least I don’t have to worry about not getting 08 nickel wound strings anymore because Fender still have them with that bullet end at a slightly higher price (3150 SL). I also noticed that they still have the 09, 011,015, 024, 032, 040 set (originally known as 150 extra lights, the strings Mark played on the Making Movies tour) which are now denoted as 150XL, while 150L is now 09,011,016,024,032,042.

Knopfler himself has meanwhile moved to heavier string as we know, and plays 010s (or heavier) on most of his electric guitars now. At least on Sultans of Swing and Romeo & Juliet he still played a signature MK Strat with 09s, but even on these songs he tried out 010s on the last tour.

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Related articles

• Mark Knopfler licks on an acoustic – How to practice electric guitar on your acoustic
• How to get that Sultans of Swing Sound – Mark Knopfler played 08 strings?

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.

"Buy me a beer" - donate for the site via PayPal. Or buy a backing track in my online shop :)

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

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