Those beautiful 1958/59 Les Paul Standards are probably the holy grail not only for Mark Knopfler fans – Mark owns a 1958 and a 1959 and plays them on all his tours – but for all guitar players. Unfortunately the prices for these are in the region you’d normally pay for a house, so most of us will hardly ever get the chance to touch one of these. They came with those legendary original PAF humbucker pickups. Germany’s top pickup winder Harry Häussel has tried to replicate all tonal nuances of these with his 1959 model. Here is what the manufacturer himself says about his pickup:

The “Häussel-1959″ model gives you that legendary old PAF sound, still sought-after by professionals the world over. Manufactured with original wire, original-sized magnets and our optimally-matched winding, this pickup will captivate you with its silky, ‘woody-warm’ sound – on chord work, the sound of each string is clearly defined, while the overall sound is breezy and slightly nasal, but never muddy. The extremely agreeable, sweet highs make each tone a desirable delicacy for sound gourmets, while solos become a symphony of soaring sonic satisfaction. The 1959 model ‘smacks’ beautifully each time you strike the strings, gliding effortlessly into harmonic overtones and feedback. This is a pickup with a powerful ‘hook’ -and perfect if you want to get that truly authentic PAF sound.

Of course I don’t own a 1958 or 59 Les Paul, just an ‘ordinary’ 1974 Les Paul Custom . With its cherry sunburst finish it looks nice, especially after I replaced the black plastic parts to cream ones, and I also like the sound.  I was really satisfied with the original pickups – and many commentators on my youtube clips on which I played this guitar agreed with me. Nevertheless, I recently installed the Häussel pickups to hear for myself what all the talk about the silky, woody tone of the Häussel 1959 is about.

I recorded a youtube video when I plugged in the guitar directly after putting in the pickups, so you will really witness my first impression of these pickups. Check out why I will leave them in my guitar and why I cannot go on with the original Gibson pickups anymore.

The Häussels are not cheap but if you like me become addictive of this warm but transparent sound, you can get them for a top price here in my online shop.

 

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What can be nicer than one of those wonderful old National resophonic guitars like the Style-0? The answer is, of course, two of these! My friend Thomas brought his 1932 Style-O along for a photo session. And what a wonderful guitar this is – shiny and sparkling like one of the new reissues but real vintage, almost 80 years old. The pictures from the photo session show the guitar from all sides, and some in contrast to my battered-looking 1936 Style-O.

Differences

The National Style-0 from the early 30ies have a different, longer body shape. The body joins the neck at the 12th fret, while from the mid-30ies on the joint was near the 14th fret. For this reason the body was slightly larger, and thus has more volume. In fact Thomas’ National sounds deeper and has more low end than the 1936, however, you never know in how far the sound difference is caused by other aspects. One is that on his 1932 the resonator rests on a ring of thin rubber foil. This was done by a luthier some time ago to remedy buzz from the resonator.

Both guitars differ a lot in detail, e.g. different resonator covers, different logos, different headstocks, etc. The pictures might tell more than many words here.

The 1932 has a flat fingerboard while the 1936 is curved. Both have the original frets, but in case of the 1932 these are heavily worn, especially in the middle of the frets so that the frets appear almost concave which makes it unpleasant to fret certain chords. The 1936 has an extremely fat neck, the Shubb capo can be used only up to to the 5th fret and does not fit anymore beyond this point.

 

Both have the Hawaiian scene with a volcano, a canoe and the palm trees on the back, but both are different. National used many different variations over the years.

 

Video

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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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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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This week I had a nice guitar here – a Gibson Chet Atkins CEC. The CE stands for classical electric, in other words a solid-body guitar with nylon strings and a piezo pickup, while the last C stands for conventional neck width (2″/5.1 cm  at the nut, a CE model with a neck width of 1.825″ / 4.6 cm was also available).

This guitar model was developed by Chet Atkins who approached Gibson with his prototype. The model appeared in Gibson’s catalogue in 1982, right at the time when Dire Straits recorded the Love over Gold album. This album features two songs – Private Investigations and the title track – on which a classical (=nylon-strung) guitar was used. Note that on the album it was NOT the Gibson Chet Atkins, however, Mark  Knopfler started to play it on stage for the Love over gold tour, right after recording the album. You can hear it e.g. on the Alchemy live album where it was used not only on Private Investigations and Love over Gold but also in the outro of Romeo&Juliet. Knopfler (probably) also used it on many sessions with other artists in the early 80ies,  e.g. with Phil Everly or Paul Brady.

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Specs

The body is not all solid mahagony but features sound chambers to reduce weight and to make the sound more acoustic. The top is solid spruce or cedar. The neck is mahagony with a neck joint location at the 12th fret – like a classical guitar. The scale is 25 1/2″, the fingerboard and the bridge are from ebony.

The pickup system consists of six individual piezos that are installed under the bridge. The pickup signal is preamplified in the control cavity (that consequently houses a 9V battery), a volume control and the (active) tone control is located on the rim of the guitar (later models have a bass and treble control). A really useful feature are six trim pots inside the control cavity that allow to adjust the volume for each string individually so that you can equalize volume differences easily.

The guitar here i a CEC with the wider nut, I suspect – it is not easy to see on pictures – that Mark Knopfler had the CE model with the more narrow neck. For me the wide neck is nothing I am used to, nevertheless the guitar is not really difficult to play.

Sound

The Gibson Chet Atkins produces a faithful classical guitar sound, and can be played even at high volume without the risk of feedback. Of course a ‘real’ classical guitar might produce the typical sound even better – for this reason Mark Knopfler probably replaced the Gibson with a Ramirez on the On Every Street tour in 1991/2.

One problem of many classical guitars – and also of the example shown here – is intonation. As the bridge does not have individually adjustable saddles like on an elctric guitar, and neither  a ‘compensated’ bridge design with different lenths for the different strings, the guitar never perfectly intonates all notes. If you tune the open strings, the bass note on e.g. the low e string is out of tune at the higher frets, and there is almost nothing you can do against it.

Here is a video I recorded with this guitar (if video jumps make sure slide show above is not running):

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