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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The Mark Knopfler Signature Stratocaster was introduced by Fender in 2003. Officially it was available in one colour only – Hot Rod Red. However, the first production run was in a different colour. I remember when I first saw one in a shop in 2003: it did not look like on Fender’s product pictures, or like Mark Knopfler’s famous red 1961 Strat, instead it was much darker. Without the headstock decal with Knopfper’s signature you would not have believed that this guitar should have anything to do with Mark Knopfler. I saw two more of these in other shops only a bit later, and both also had the darker red, something that looked similar to Fender’s Dakota red of the 60ies (see this blog post for more info on Fender’s different red finishes).

I must say that I was disappointed by the look of the first signature Strats, and I could not understand why the ones that Knopfler played on stage looked so much brighter. Was it just the stage lights that caused this impression? A few months later I saw another one on the Frankfurt Music Fair, and this one was as I always had imagined it to be: a bright red like in the early days of Dire Straits. From an insider I got the information that indeed the first production run was a wrong colour due to a mistake. Rumours say that when Knopfler found the first signature Strat in a London guitar shop that also had the wrong colour, he was upset and made Fender to correct the mistake immediately.

It seems noone knows exactly how many of the darker ones were produced. I somewhere read a figure like some 30, but if I take into consideration that alone in my city I saw three of them in the shops, plus what I read in internet forums,  I believe there must be far more.  As it seems the serial numbers do not really give an answer to how many there are because darker ones  exist with serial numbers higher than of Hot Rod red ones. I heard that Glenn Saggers, Mark Knopfler’s guitar technician, started to file a list with the serial numbers of the wrong-coloured  guitars. If you own one of the dark ones, you might use the comment function of this blog post to tell us the serial number, maybe we can find out more this way.

Otherwise those darker guitars were identical to the later ones, and theoretically they might become a special collector item due to their limited number.

 

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Related articles

• Mark Knopfler Signature Strat with lipstick pickups played on Forever Young (duet with Bob Dylan)
• Mark Knopfler Signature Strats vs. 1964 Stratocaster
• The different Mark Knopfler signature Strats used on the Get Lucky tour
• Red – redder – the reddest: fiesta, dakota, candy apple, hot rod, and more Fender colours

After seeing Mark Knopfler live on  the recent Get Lucky tour I can confirm that he plays different MK Signature Stratocasters on stage (compare the post on Guitars on the get Lucky tour). In Oberhausen und Amsterdam he seemed to play four different red MK Strats:

#1 – on Border Reiver

This one is tuned to Eb which of course does not mean an open tuning but one half note lower than standard tuning, something Jimi Hendrix or Stevie Ray Vaughn did to get a fatter sound without having trouble with playing techniques like string bending.

still looking for good picture

#2 – on What it is & Sailing to Philadelphia

Just like on the last tour, he probably has 010 string gauge on this one. Serial No is SE 00000 (confirmed for 2008 tour)

still looking for good picture

#3 – on outro of Romeo & Juliet and on Sultans of Swing

Probably with 009 string gauge again (confirmed for the Kill to get Crimson tour), with a wireless camera mounted on headstock. This one has a comparatively light rosewood fingerboard. On the 2008 tour he played these two songs on Glenn Worf’s MK signature Strat, which has a lighter, more orange colour. This might be the same guitar again.

#4 on So far Away

On some gigs he played the ’54 Stratocaster, but seems to use another MK signature with heavy strings (wound g string) now. Easily to recognize on pictures because of the narrow guitar strap.

One of Mark’s signature  Strats has the serial no SE 00001, but I cannot tell for sure which of the four guitars this is. The one on So far away has a nice slightly flamed headstockk, but the flame/grain pattern seems to be different than on the 00001 Strat. Maybe it is the one on Border reiver?

I am looking for good pictures of guitars   #1 and # 2 to contrast them all here. If you have any, please send them to me so that I can put them into this post.

And if you wonder where I got the information about the guitars of the 2008 tour from, check out this video in case you don’t already know it:

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Related articles

• Mark Knopfler Signature Strat with lipstick pickups played on Forever Young (duet with Bob Dylan)
• Mark Knopfler Signature Strats vs. 1964 Stratocaster
• What are Mark Knopfler’s vintage guitars worth?
• They all look the same – How to tell Mark Knopfler’s different signature Strats apart
• 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