One of Mark Knopfler’s most famous guitars is surely his National Style-O (read “style – oh”). This is the guitar on the cover of Brothers in Arms. AFAIK he bought this guitar from his buddy Steve Phillips long before Dire Straits, it was his second National (the first was a Tricone from the late 20ies which he bought from an old man in Wales). What makes a National unique is […]
This is going to be short article, rather a post meant to build up speculations: The following two pictures (from different shows, both live in early 1979) show something that seem to be an effect box that is still undidentified. I have almost finished an article about one possible explaination that is coming soon, but meanwhile it might be interesting to hear other people’s opinion, so simply use the comment […]
After the other article about Knopfler’s Ernie Ball volume pedal, this time I want to feature the volume pedal he played before, which means during the Dire Straits days until the end of the Making Movies tour in 1981. The pedal I am talking about is the silver Morley Volume Pedal. Morley made a whole range of effect foot pedals, including a very popular wha-wha or even models with built-in […]
It cannot be answered with 100% certainty which string gauge or brand Mark Knopfler played on e.g. the first Dire Straits album or on Communique. There were a few interviews with major guitar magazines, but unfortunately none of these asked for strings. For a long time the earliest information was from the Making Movies tour book which listed Fender Extra Lights for this tour. However, this was late 1980 and […]
Mark Knopfler has used a volume pedal almost since the very first beginning of his career. He does not only use it to adjust the overall level, but also for his characteristic volume swells that make a note fade in just like a violin. In short, he hits the note with the pedal all the way back to remove the attack, then presses it down to fade in the note. […]
Today something about one of Mark Knopfler most famous guitars … In 1980 Mark Knopfler started to play a red Schecter Strat on stage instead of the red Fenders he played before. Everyone knows this guitar – it was the guitar on the Alchemy live CD/video, on Live Aid, and on countless other TV concerts from the 80ies or 90ies. He still owns this guitar and uses it occasionally these […]
A rather strange tuning that seems to be part of any Mark Knopfler concert these days is the high-G tuning. Mark Knopfler owns a beautiful sunburst Telecaster Custom – probably a ’67 that was originally played by his brother David with Dire Straits, more on this guitar in a future post. These days (not in the past) this guitar seems to be dedicated to the high-g tuning. So, what is […]
Fans of vintage guitars normally claim that vintage guitars sound better than new ones. Why? Some say because the wood is old and dry, or it resonates better with the time a guitar is played. Others say that some parts were in detail different than they are today. Some of this is vodoo, but there are in fact a few real differences. One of these is the kind of wood […]
Today I messed around with an audio player plug-in for WordPress (the software used to create this blog). In some other post I wrote something about the Hamburg concert (Musikhalle, Hamburg, Germany, Oct. 28, 1978) and mentioned that I slowed it down to the original speed (the concert around in some fan hubs or on torrent trackers runs almost ridiculously fast), so I added the audio player with a sample […]
This weekend is a rather busy one, so not too much time for the blog so far:( This blog is online for less than two weeks, and the number of readers is steadily increasing, thank you a lot. I was wondering if I can go on blogging about this stuff forever or if I will run out of topics or ideas , so I made a list with concrete blog […]