The recent Mark Knopfler & Bob Dylan tour ended with the show at the Hammersmith Apollo in London on November 21, 2011. The last encore played that day was a duet of both masters – the song ‘Forever Young’ (from Dylan’s 1974 album Planet Waves). A new guitar appeared on this song – a Mark Knopfler Signature Strat with lipstick pickups.

The original lipstick pickup

The lipstick pickup was the pickup on vintage Danelectro and many  Silvertone guitars – like the one that Mark plays on Donegan’s Gone. It is called lipstick pickup because those silver tubes that house the coil look like a lipstick  – in fact they originally were surplus lipstick tubes! Inside, a lipstick pickup does not have individual pole pieces like a standard Stratocaster pickup but one alnico 6 bar magnet instead, and the coil is simply wound around the bar (see picture).

 

The sound of the lipstick pickup is rather different than the stock Stratocaster pickup. Generally pickups without single pole pieces have a less dominant resonance peak (more information on the resonance peak in this blog post)  and thus softer treble end, plus the metall lipstick tube dampens that resonance peak even more (like the cover on a Telecaster neck pickup does). The sound can for this reason be described with warm, jangly,  silky, transparent, but less harsh than a normal Strat, less bite, less high end.

 

In Danelectro and Slivertone guitars both lipstick pickups were normally wired in series instead of the parallel. This also causes a drastic sound change.

Lipstick pickups for the Stratocaster

Mark Knopfler was probably enthused for these pickups by Mike Henderson, who was Mark’s third guitarist on the 2001 tour. Mike favours Danelectro guitars for slide. The original lipstick pickup is too long to fit into a Stratocaster pickguard but many manufacturers offer replacements that fit into the  Stratocaster. In fact the pickups in Mark’s guitar are Seymour Duncans  SLS-1. As his guitar  does not look modified otherwise (normal 5-way switch) the pickups are probably wired in parallel, like in a standard Stratocaster. Mark played the 2&3 position (neck and middle) on Forever Young.

 

Here finally is a video showing Mark and Bob Dylan playing Forever Young:

Update: Simon was so nice to let us know through his comment that there is video on the official Seymour Duncan channel that shows Seymour Duncan himself with the loaded pickguard he made for Mark Knopfler. One detail he mentions is that it is a RWRP pickup (reverse wound/reverse polarity) in the middle position to cancel hum.

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• The iSound-ST – New sounds for the Stratocaster – Does it help to get the Mark Knopfler sound?
• The wrong colour of the first Mark Knopfler Signature Strats
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• Mark Knopfler – Guitars on the Get Lucky tour 2010

In the videos below we were comparing two Mark Knopfler Signature Strats to a 1964 Fender Stratocaster, also in red (fiesta). Talking about red, note that one of the signature Strats is in the ‘wrong’ colour the very first ones came with, while the other one is the normal hot rod red. It is always interesting to hear how different three Strats will sound, even Strats of exactly the same model with the same specs. We feel the hot rod red Strat sounds warmer and fatter while the darker one has a nice transparent sound, a bit crisper but also warm. The ’64 Strat does not have an ash body like the signatures, but one of alder (like Mark Knopfler’s 1961 Strat), and the fingerboard is not the slab board (that was produced between 1959 and 1962) but the thinner veneer board. This particular guitar has a bell-like transparent sound with a typical slygthly nasal midrange. All in all, three great guitars which all sound different but all great.
All guitars had 10er strings and were played over a Music Man amp, no effects.

Here is a poll in which you can let others know which one you personally like best.

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• Features and specs of a ’61 Vintage Stratocaster
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With this blog post I want to introduce my latest product – the iSound-ST. The what you might ask? The iSound-ST is a rotary switch that is thought to replace one of the controls of your Strat, normally one of the tone controls (I recommend to make the other tone control a master tone control). It mainly changes the Strat’s behaviour when you put your 5-way switch into the 1&2-psotion (bridge & middle pickups), enabling new in-between sounds, plus some more.

What was the idea behind the iSound-ST

I came up with the idea some years ago. In a way it has to do with the mysterious black volume knob on Mark Knopfler’s Dire Straits Strats. From various pictures I knew that he did not have the original poti in his Strat (he had one with a solid shaft instead of a split-shaft) so there was a need for a new knob since the original would not fit anymore. The other thing I always felt was that especially his 1 & 2 sound was somewhat different from a normal Strat. This might be nonsense but I know of many others who feel the same. So I said to myself “What if the black knob (and the replaced poti) is not just a different knob but a hint to some modification of the guitar circuit?” In the seventies when he go his Strat such modifications were really common.

I took one of my Strats and  led out all pick-up wires to outside of the guitar. This way I could easily experiment with all kinds of circuit modification, like different pickup combinations and more. As it seems Knopfler’s sound at the positions 3 and 2 (neck alone, middle alone) was “normal”,  I was searching especially for modifications that affect the sound in the 1 & 2 position. In fact I found many interesting and good new sounds, and some of these seemed to be closer to what I was after than the normal Strat sound. Others gave me totally new sounds that also seemed very handy to me, e.g. the option to get sounds as fat as a humbucker pickup from a Strat, and all these were passive sounds, no active mid-boost, no battery was required.

Next task was a way to get these sounds without having to rewire cables outside of the guitar. One thing was a must for me: the look of the guitar should not be changed, and I wanted to keep all the original Strat sounds as well. I found that it was possible to achieve this, the answer was … the iSound-ST.

The iSound-ST is a rotary switch with 4 positions, in each of these the 1&2-psoition sound of your Strat will be different (in fact it will be warmer or fatter the more you turn it anti-clockwise). At some positions it also changes some other sounds of the Strat (e.g. when using the middle or bridge position of the 5-way), but at one position of the iSound-ST – the ’10′ position, all turned up – your Strat will still behave as it did before, so you’ll lose nothing, just win new sounds.

After some time of using it I forgot to wonder if Mark Knopfler might had something similar in his Strat or not because I liked it so much. In fact you always heard it on most of my youtube videos, I think I really never used the ‘normal’ 1&2 position sound. So the ‘i’ in iSound might stand for your individual sound, or for Ingo’s sound. And I have it in all of my Strats (except those with the Schecter-style pickguards since these allowed many pickup combinations anyway).

Chances of a modification in Mark Knopfler’s Sultans Strat

Today his red ’61 Fender Strat has the normal white volume knob again, and his other red Fender Strat (the one with the maple fingerboard) was given away for some charity some decades ago, so there is no option to find out details of his guitars then anymore. In a Guitar Player interview he said that both of his Strats were stock (except the DiMarzio pickup in one of these). On the other hand, he got it 2nd-hand about 1977, it it imaginable that he himself was not even aware of a circuit mod (I think I heard something similar about Chris Rea’s red Strat who also found out years later that his red Strat had been modified all the time). Or he simply did not want to tell about it, remember, in the late 70ies he was new on the scene and his unique guitar sound was really one of key elements of their success then. Would you have told the world about a sound secret if there was really one?

Some years later he said in another interview: “I liked the 3-way switch better than the 5-position; it had a better sound. But I kept knocking it out. I have a 5-position switch on the Strat now. The roadies are always pulling bits out and sticking things in.” This indicates that he maybe was not always aware of what was in his guitar. One thing is sure: a 5-way switch cannot sound different from the 3-way, it is exactly the same switch with just an added notch to make it rest more stable at the in-between position! Maybe the roadies also changed something else here except replacing the switch.

Another detail: he had the black volume knob, and two normal white knobs. Have you ever noticed that these two did not say ‘Tone’ as they normally do, but the middle one says ‘Volume’?

And finally, he got a solid-shaft poti (or even switch?) in both of his red Strats at that time.

iSound-ST – more details

It seems we will never know all details behind those early Dire Straits sounds. I for myself stopped worrying about possibly modification of his guitar since I love the iSound-ST in my Strats. This is what matters for me. I get warmer sounds and can my Strat even make sound fat – very fat. I played Money for Nothing and Brothers in Arms with cover bands on my Strat, and I missed nothing.All in all, the iSound-ST gives you six new sounds, in addition to the normal five sounds of a Strat, so you will get 11 sounds from a Strat.

In some of my Strats I also added a second mod that is described in the manual of the iSound-ST: I use another of the Strat’s controls as a blender poti that blends between the normal Strat sound and the fat Strat sounds. This is really what does it for me: normal Strat sound which I can beef up to any agree whenever I need more warmth. (I took the volume poti for this since I use a volume pedal anyway, and it is still possible to mute the guitar with the blender poti and the 5-way at a certain position).

Installing the iSound-ST- Is it difficult?

You need to replace one (or even two if you want, see above) poti which requires soldering of course. In fact you will have to unsolder various cables and connect them differently with the iSound-ST. It comes with a detailled step-by-step instruaction, including different pictures of the curcuit, so it is not too complicated. You don’t have to drill or change anything else as long as your guitar has Standard Strat measurements ( I cannot guarantee for any Strat like Japanese copies from the 70ies that often had different internal routings  of course).

Note that my current version of the iSound-ST features a normal split-shaft so that you can use your existing knob, no change to the look of your Strat.

Check out the iSound-ST in our shop

Sound clips will follow, as said, most of my old youtube videos feature it anyway, however, there are none demonstrating the real fat sounds. Watch out for things to come. Feel free to use the comment function of this post to ask for more details.

Here are a few comments from user reviews:

Dermot aka Strat61:
“If you have a few strats put this on all of them starting with your favourite one – you can’t lose.”
“The iSound-ST will give you additional extremely useful range sounds and tones regardless from Tele tones through to a beefier out phase to even a Les Paul type tone”
“Well on a decent stock strat and a good tube amp you may already be getting good out of phase DS tones, but this switch will provide additional clarity and boost to those clean out of phase tones from normal setting (thin) to stronger (thick) – now that has to be good as the normal strat out of phase tone can be sometimes too weak especially in a live setup.”
read the full review

TheWizzard:
“The new combinations are great for those old Dire Straits songs, as your guitar will sound much fatter and warmer now. But it is also very useful for other music styles too.
For me the iSound ST is one of the best sound-tools I have ever bought because it’s much easier now to get excellent tones out of your guitar and that just by turning a rotary switch.”
read the full review

 

 

 

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Related articles

• The DiMarzio FS-1 pick-up of Mark Knopfler’s red Stratocaster
• Mark Knopfler Signature Strat with lipstick pickups played on Forever Young (duet with Bob Dylan)
• Mark Knopfler Signature Strats vs. 1964 Stratocaster
• Speaker shoot-out for the Mark Knopfler sound: Electro Voice EV 12L, Celestion Vintage 30 & G12M “Greenbacks” in 4 x 12 cabinets
• Comparing different guitars
• Trying to recreate that Sultans of Swing sound – The gear I used on the Puresolo competition.

After the last video in which I already  compared the VFS-1 pickup to a 1955 Fender Strat pickup and to the DiMarzio FS-1, here is a first demo of the complete Schecter-style pickguard with the VFS-1 pickups. I was jamming in the Mark Knopfler style over a self-produced 2 chords backing groove on my metallic pink Strat, which is mainly a 1983 Japanese vintage Squier but with a new bird’s eye maple neck. You are hearing the combination of neck & middle pickups, the switches are in the up position (tapped coil). More demos of others of the 26 possible sound combinations will follow.

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Related articles

• The VFS-1 – New pick-up for our Schecter-style pickguards
• How close is the VFS-1 Pickup to the Original Fender Vintage and the DiMarzio FS-1?
• Demoing pickup combinations of the Schecter style pickguards
• Limited Alchemy Edition of the white Schecter pickguard
• White Aluminium Schecter-style pickguards now available
• Schecter-style loaded pickguard now shipping

Our loaded metal pickguards are now available with a new pick-up model: the VFS-1. V stands for vintage, F for fat, (and S for Strat).

Unlike our Schecter-style pick-up (which is very close to a Schecter F500T), the new pick-up has the “normal” sized magnet pole pieces, like a vintage Strat pick-up, and can be used with a plastic cap (the F500Ts do not allow to put a cap on them). So it looks and sounds similar to the Seymour Duncan SSL1s or APS-1 that Mark Knopfler played in his red Schecter dream machine Strat. But that’s not all, the VFS-1 has also a second outer coil to create  fatter sounds, similar to the DiMarzio FS-1 that Mark Knopfler played in his red Fender of early Dire Straits days.

In other words, the new tapped pick-up allows two sounds that can be toggled with the up/off/down mini switches of our pickguards. You will have the same 27 sound combinations from the three mini switches as with the F500T pick-ups. In the up-position of the mini switch the sound will be  much closer to the vintage Strat sound than the thinner but bassier  sound of the F500T.

The new pick-up is also ideal for all who would like to have a DiMarzio FS-1 in the neck position of their Strat for those Single-Handed-Sailor sounds but do not want to lose the normal Strat sound. You can e.g. switch the outer coil on or off with a push-pull poti (available here) so that the overall look of the original Strat is not changed.

The price of this pick-up is the same as of our F500T-style pickups, and the loaded pickguard also costs the same as with the old type (which of course will also remain available). Sound demo clips coming soon. [edit:  here is one which A/B compares the VFS-1 to both a 1955 Strat pickup and to a DiMarzio FS-1, more to come]

See the VFS-1 in our shop.

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Related articles

• First demo of the VFS-1 pickguard
• How close is the VFS-1 Pickup to the Original Fender Vintage and the DiMarzio FS-1?
• Demoing pickup combinations of the Schecter style pickguards
• Limited Alchemy Edition of the white Schecter pickguard
• White Aluminium Schecter-style pickguards now available
• Schecter-style loaded pickguard now shipping

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