Today I was on the Fender website and accidentally found a nice little tool there: the online guitar tuner. When you click on one of the six tuners of the peghead, the software will play a sample of the corresponding note, played with a clean Fender sound. There are some very useful options: loop on or off (the note will be played again and again in loop mode), and you […]
I often read threads in forums about how to check if a certain part on a Fender vintage guitar is original or not. Of course there are countless books and websites which show many details that help to do so. However, there is one particular detail which is only rarely mentioned: the ‘dowel holes‘ on those old Fender bodies (I am not talking about ‘nail holes’ here!) Dowel holes If […]
As many of you might already have noticed, I recently added a forum to this site. We have the comment function below each blog post which has been used to discuss everything that is related to the post subject, but many times completely new threads emerged within the comments which became easily off-topic in a way. For this reason – and to make it possible for readers to start a […]
Mark Knopfler’s “Sultans” Strat (ser.-no. #68354) is from 1961. The second red Fender Strat he played with Dire Straits (ser.no #80470) was from about the same period (apart from the question in how far it was original Fender at all). For this reason I put together a table to give you a survey about the distinctive features that are different on a 1961 Strat compared with earlier or later Strats. […]
Everyone who has seen Mark Knopfler live on one of his recent tours might have notived that cool-looking turquoise combo amp next to Knopfler’s Marshall cabinets. Knopfler’s second guitarist Richard Bennet also plays one. It is the Tone King Imperial. Tone King amps are built from selected quality parts by Mark Bartel in Baltimore. Mark does all the woodworking, upholstery, and electronics assembly himself to have total control about the […]
Today while surfing youtube I found this rare video which I have never seen before, showing Mark Knopfler as a guest on a Brendan Crocker gig in Leeds, June 18, 1989 (the youtube video title says July 18, June 18 is confirmed and I doubt that there was a second gig one month later). For those who don’t know him, Brendan Crocker is an old friend of Mark’s, also a […]
Sultans of Swing from Dire Straits’ first album is surely one of THE songs that comes to mind when talking about fingerstyle guitar playing. In addition to Mark Knopfler’s unique playing style it also features some striking Spanish-sounding elements, starting from the chord progression itself to some flamenco-like strumming techniques – which is this blog article, or rather the embedded video, is about. The typical flamenco stroke is called Rasgueado […]
In the blog post about the Sultans of Swing lead guitar track that was made available through the Guitar Hero 5 game we had some interesting discussions about some technical aspects of the guitar sound. One was whether the effects we hear (compression, chorus, reverb) were added later in the mix or were recorded right with the instrument track. Unfortunately there is no direct information available so we will probably […]
After more than 100 articles in this blog I am still not running out of ideas for future posts. I just wish I had more time for blogging and producing video tutorials. I know that many readers of this blog are also experts and wonder if anyone would like to write an article for the blog. Dermot was the first with his article about his sunburst Schecter Strat copy. So, […]
With this article, I want to feature my good old acoustic guitar: a Gibson MK-81 from 1976. I got this guitar more than 20 years ago. I was looking for an acoustic guitar and was trying out all the guitars in that shop. After a while the shop owner brought one more from some room in the back, saying I should try out this one, it was special. This was […]