Easy way to cure a scratchy voice coil in a guitar speaker

I recently had a problem with a Music Man HD130 amp (the one Mark Knopfler used in the early days of Dire Straits). One speaker was creating a scratchy, distorted sound, surprisingly only at very low volume while it was fine at medium or high volume. I managed to cure it with an easy trick, nothing too special or secret but nevertheless something I want to share in case someone […]

Strange guitar sound on the Werchter 1981 recording – Did Mark mix direct out and microphone?

On July 5, 1981, Dire Straits played on the Werchter festival in Belgium. The concert was broadcasted on the radio and on TV and is one of the very few soundboard recordings from the 1980/81 On Location tour. There is one thing that always strikes me about that recording: Mark’s guitar sound was what I’d call ‘strange’, and completely different from all other recordings of the same tour we have […]

Music Man Amps are back

What a nice surprise on this year’s Frankfurt Music Fair:  Music Man amps are coming back.  DV MARK (dvmark.it) displayed reissues of those  silver-black Music Man amps that were popular in the seventies and eighties. Clapton played Music Man amps, Albert Lee played them, and of course Mark Knopfler. He used 130 watts combos on the Communiqué and Making Movies tours. The complete Music Man amp line was discontinued in […]

More early Dire Straits pictures: unknown 1978 gig

The late 70ies were long before the invention of the digital camera. There would be so many more pictures of all kind of events if everyone could take pictures as easily as today. As this was not the case, the majority of all pictures of rock bands from that time were taken by professional photographers who sold them to magazines or newspapers, making their pictures public this way. For this […]

Jim Kelley amps – the FACS model used on the Brothers in Arms tour

Jim Kelley  was a small manufacturer of boutique amps who started his business in the late 70ies. He started with only one amp model, a single channel amp with 6 tubes and just 3 knobs. The  later dual channel was still based on this model. Compared to other boutique amp that were favourits at that time – namely Mesa Boogie or Dumble – the Kelley amps followed a different approach. […]

Dire Straits at the Hope & Anchor pub 1977 – new picture

I recently got an old Dutch magazine called JOEPIE from February 1979 with a two-page story about Dire Straits. It features two pictures that show the band on stage at the Hope & Anchor pub. Dire Straits played there several times in late 1977: on September 10 (in the evening after  they played the Clapham Common gig in the afternoon of that same day), on November 4, 11, and 18, […]

Tone King Imperial: Played on which songs?

According to Guy Fletcher, the songs on which Mark plays the Tone King Imperial are: True love will never fade Shangri la Prairie wedding Dark is the night/Donegan’s Gone Postcards from Paraguay Let It All Go I guess this is meant to be true rather for the latest tours than for the studio albums (click here to find out what gear was used on them), and it matches what I […]