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Guitar in general, Misc, Understanding music

My Privateering review

This week Privateering was released, Mark’s new double-CD album. As there will be a lot of reviews anyway, I will focus on some particular aspects like guitars, sounds, songwriting techniques etc in my review. Likewise, I will not discuss anything related to lyrics. I will tell you what I love but also what I personally would have liked to be different. The album is still very fresh for me after listening to it for only a few days so I might see some things a bit different after some more time of listening.

The album consists of 20 songs, 10 on each of the two CDs.  Mark always wrote a lot of songs for his albums, even the  Love over Gold album (1982) was initially considered for a double CD. It seems that he writes more and more these days so his first double-CD had been overdue for some time. Like with all his last albums, Mark focused on his musical roots so that we find a blend of Irish / Celtic melodies, rock, jazz, folk, and blues again. However, it is namely the blues that is much more dominant on Privateering than on any other MK album before. I think I heard Mark saying that one day he will record a blues album for the first time back in the 90ies –  Privateering is not just blues but maybe the outcome of what has been in the cards for some time.

Song for Song

1 – Redbud Tree

This one has been played on the radio for some weeks, it is not the single (there is none yet) but was called the ‘focus song’ for the radio (although I don’t see it as the most typical of the album). A strummed acoustic guitar leads you through the song, the chords and chord changes are typical MK  (Dm, C,  Bb, F…  a la Sultans of Swing, or the change from D to Dm a la Six Blade Knife or Telegraph Road). And we have time-signature changes all over the song, mainly half bars, as in countless other MK songs (in fact I consider these time changes as THE typical element in his songwriting).

The middle section of the song consists of something I am sure many of us love to hear: a long solo on a clean Strat – I heard it was a MK signature Strat – not played with a pick like Mark often did to get the Hank Marvin sound in the past but fingerpicked).

I love the melody of the verses, the chorus is catchy, too, but somehow “too much” for my taste. Also I wonder how the song would sound if the other instruments – mainly the drums – were not mixed so low?

All in all a great song.

2 – Haul Away

Here Mark opens the “Irish folk tunes” drawer. He has always used ingredients from here but I think the first time we heard him singing such a tune was Lily of the West with the Chieftains, or All the Roadrunning a bit later. This song is really beautiful, it has a strong melody, and the blend of violin, accordion, and whistle sounds nice. Nothing to dislike here.

3 – Don’t forget your Hat

Here the blues comes for the first time. It is closer to tradtional Muddy Water blues than anything we heard from Mark before (although You can’t beat the House  from the last albums was already a hint in this direction). We have the blues piano, slide guitar (the Danelectro?), a shuffle rhythm, and … the harp (played by Kim Wilson of the Fabulous Thunderbirds).

Luckily it is not the standard 12-bar chord progression but something on its own, again including time changes. If you like the song or not has probably to do with if you like blues or not. I was surprised a bit when I heard the song for the first time but got used to it and like it. I think it is fair to say that it proves that Mark can play authentic blues (in case anyone doubted it).

4 – Privateering

The title song is one of the strongest songs of the album. The mix of vocals and guitar lines with a unique melody and lots of fancy rhythm is really cool, and it catches you (I notice it plays a lot in my head these days). Major parts of the song rely mainly on vocals and acoustic guitar, the drums did not come in before more than two minutes in the song. Unfortunately they are restricted mainly to the instrumental ‘chorus’ part of the song, I can imagine some nice groovy stuff over the verses as well.

5 – Miss you Blues

Another side of the blues, going back even more in musical history. This song would have fit on the Notting Hillbillies album perfectly. The slide solos are beautiful, so is the acoustic guitar intro. A nice little song for me (the melody is based on a traditional by the way).

6 – Corned Beef City

Here the rocker of the album comes. Throaty guitar riffs (wah boosted?) and melodic slide licks over a straight rock rhythm. Not bad, nevertheless this one is not my cup of tea yet. It reminds me a bit of Gravy Train (which I like but don’t see as Mark’s strongest song either). I guess many will disagree with me on this one which means this song has its right to be there as well…

7 – Go, Love

This one is one of my favourites of the album at the moment. Especially the melody of the verses is wonderful. Also the way the chorus resolves into the guitar solo. The chorus itself seems a bit weaker to me than the verse but it “destroys” nothing for me (as the chorus on Je suis desolé did for me) so I am happy with the song as it is.

8 – Hot or what

Blues again, all I wrote about Don’t forget your hat is true for this one, too (the key – C – is also the same, however no time changes this time). Some nice guitar solos.

9 – Yon two Crows

This song seems like a mix of Celtic sounds and instrumental parts with a rock song a la Silvertown Blues to me. It has a ‘spooky, foggy  mood’ and I  must admit I like it much.

10 – Seattle

A slow ballad with lots of hidden beauty. I love the first line of the chorus (“Seattle, you got to love the rain…”). There are some nice low guitar lines that sound like the ’54 Strat with  a pick with some pedal steel sound floating above in the outro, really nice.

11 – Kingdom of Gold

Kingdom of Gold is another example of Mark’s approach to write folk songs. It would have fit on on the previous albums, but at the same time I hear that melancholy of e.g. Sands of Nevada in it. It is not one of my favourites of the album, but it might grow on me a bit more.

12 – Got to have something

This is the third song of the album’s blues set. It starts with a cool guitar rhythm and has more of a rock song. The key is not too far away from the other two mentioned so far ( B now instead of C), and we have time changes again (a half bar before each vocal like).

13 – Radio City Sereneade

Another slow song, with some nice melody lines. Not a bad song but very slow so you have to be in the right mood. I like the horn hook starting at e.g. 4:29. Did you hear the Down to the Waterline fog horn at 0:04?

14 – I used to could

Another one of the ‘blues session’, starting with a great Walk of Live riff (also in E), not too fast, not too slow. The vocal melody sounds ‘traditional’ but has something special that I like. There are various harp and guitar solos, this time not slide guitar but some ‘open strings’ stuff over E.

15 – Gator Blood

Still bluesy but more rock on Gator Blood.  The guitar lick is abit similar to the one on Do right to me, Baby from Slow Train Coming (I guess open G tuning with capo at the third fret). I can imagine that the breaks in the middle where Mark plays those slide quarter-note triplets on the high e string will blow us away when played at high volume live on stage (like the break in Calling Elvis). The rest of the song is really simple (which is not meant in a negative way), only few chord changes, a time change in the chorus, only a few instruments (which is something I must say I like as a contrast to the growing number of  instruments during the last years).

16 -Blubird

This song seems like a mix of Fade to Black and  the Argentinian tango approach of e.g. El Macho. It might grow on me a bit more but up to now I find myself skipping it often. I don’t like that harp-sounds-like-accordion solo in the middle but the guitar solo at the end is not bad, especially how it starts (click here for a tab and an analysis).

17 – Dream of the Drawned Submariner

A beautiful song again, just listen to the line “far away…… on the water”. The acoustic guitar is great that comes after the clarinet solo. And I like the synth string sound that creates a nice mood, with the Les Paul (?) licks between the clarinet at the end of the song.

18 – Blood and Water

Another side of the blues, more jazzy chord changes. Is it Paul Franklin on pedal steel guitar who plays those wah-wah chords occasionally? Lots of guitar solo stuff. Maybe it is because the song is towards the end of an album with 20 songs, I still am not sure what to think about this one.

19 – Today is Okay

Again a bluesy song, with harp solos, guitar riffs, blues piano, shuffle rhythm… . This time we have a true 12-bar chord progression for the solo sections. If you love blues and love MK, you should love this one.

20 – After the Beanstalk

The last song might be a skipper for some. It reminds me of a Ry Cooder song (still wondering which one, should be from the Boomer’s Story or Paradise and Lunch era). The instruments (e.g. the mandolin) also remind me of Cooder. Not one of  my favourites (not yet?).

All in all

After writing this review I notice that some of the words that appeard many times were “nice”, “blues”, “beautiful”, so maybe these sum up the album. With 20 songs at such an early stage some things might grow on me a bit more so it is too early for a final conclusion.

The strong emphasis on blues is  new, gone are folk waltzes (compare the number of songs in a 3/4 meter with the last two albums). I like that Mark avoids the traditional 12-bar blues scheme. And – no surprise – many songs are the continuation of what Mark did over the last let’s say two decades.

I think there is more cool stuff on Privateering than on the last two albums, this is something  I like because  the cool sound is what I  love so much about  the very early Dire Straits stuff.

One last word about something I do not like at all: I bought the limited super deluxe edition which is great with the additional DVD ( A Life in songs) , a  CD with three bonus songs, the vinyl LPs, and the artwork. However, it does not include the bonus CD of the normal deluxe edition (5 songs from rehearsals), and there is another bonus song (Your perfect song) if you buy the mp3 album at Amazon. I must admit it is not too important for me to have these as well, but if it was I had to buy the deluxe edition in addition (nice pun) to the super deluxe edition – and this is simply ridiculous. This might have to do more with a decision from the record company than from Mark but still it is a no-go I think (and there were similar complaints about the Get Lucky deluxe box before).

Dire Straits/ Mark Knopfler live pictures and videos

Pictures from Dire Straits gig – Hamburg, October 28, 1978

I recently wrote various blog posts about ‘new’ pictures from some early Dire Straits gigs (e.g. here or here). Normally it happens only rarely that such new pictures appear – we are talking about a period more than 40 years ago, a time before digital cameras existed –  but these days again someone pointed me towards another set of nine pictures on Flickr, this time from the gig in Hamburg, Musikhalle, October 28, 1978. The photographer is Heinrich Klaffs.

Years ago I already wrote a blog post about a set of pictures from this early Dire Straits gig, in fact the first gig they did in Germany at all. However, with the help of these new pictures I must correct myself and state now that the pictures in that other blog post seem rather to be from the gig on the next day, October 29, in Berlin (in fact the photographer credtited on one of those pictures –  (Jim) Rakete – is associated with Berlin). Back then I also wrote a few words on that black Music Man guitar strap and I assumed that Mark got this strap in Hamburg (Europe’s Music Man distributor , No. 1 Music, was located in Hamburg) and used it from the Hamburg gig on. Now I still think that he got it on that day in Hamburg but did not use it before the next day. So again, all pictures with the thin brown guitar strap should be from a gig before October 29, 1978, all the ones with the wider black Music Man strap are from later gigs in 1978 or 1979.

Now, here are the nine pictures:

 

Here is a sound clip from that gig. The full concert is available on a bootleg recording, which unfortunately is in poor sound quality. It also runs way too fast so I corrected the speed of this clip. They already played some of the Communique songs on that gig (they recorded Communique about two months later). Mark’s was on a top-notch concentration level once again and the recording captures some of the magic of their sound back then.

Guitars, Mark Knopfler gear, MK guitar style and licks

Videos from a trip to Mark Knopfler’s sunburst Schecter Strat

Here are some videos with the Mark Knopfler Schecter Dream Machine Strat SN 8001, the guitar I had the chance to play a few weeks ago (see A trip to Mark Knopfler’s sunburst Schecter Strat ).

The amp was a Tone King, not the Imperial but a Metropolitan combo, no effects except reverb from the amp. The strings were 09-42.
In the following three videos I played some distorted sounds  and some clean stuff that should give a good impression of what the guitar sounds like plugged directly into a tube amp.

A : distorted – various licks

Note that some riffs were played with the tone control slightly rolled off.

B : distorted – Money for Nothing

Of course this guitar was never used for Money for Nothing but the overdriven tone from the amp just seemed right to me to play some riffs from this song.

C : clean – various licks

Easy stuff for beginners, MK guitar style and licks, Understanding music

Keys for all Mark Knopfler and Dire Straits songs

I found this in the AMIT forum and thought it might be very useful info for us guitar players. The author – nickname foma – allowed copying it, so here it is, a list of all keys with the songs in that key. It even included the songs of Privateering, Mark’s coming album (to be released September 2012).

Thank you, foma 🙂

Quote:

>>>>>>>>

It’s the statistics of almost all Mark’s songs and scores keys.
Don’t know when (and why lol) I’ve done this, probably five years ago.

So, here it is (I’m working on list constantly, so it’s becomes accurately and hopefully will be spot-on):

31 in D MAJOR (D-dur): Water of Love, Wild West End, Skateaway, Les Boys, It Never Rains, Ticket To Heaven, How Long, The Rocks and the Thunder, Whistle Theme, Smooching, Going Home, Irish Love, A Secret Place Where Will You Go, Waiting For Her, Last Exit To Brooklyn, Victims, Wag The Dog, Imelda, Are We In Trouble Now, Do America, The Long Highway, Kingdom Come, Devil Baby, Coyote, Donegan’s Gone, Red Staggerwing, If This Is Goodbye, Let It All Go, The Car Was The One, Miss You Blues, Go Love
24 in E MAJOR (E-Dur): Real Girl, Eastbound Train, If I Had You, So Far Away, Walk Of Life, Why Worry, The Bug, Heavy Fuel, The Way it All Starts, In The Heartland, Cannibals, The Last Laugh, Gravy Train, The Next Time I’m In Town, The Ragpicker’s Dream, Everybody Pays, Our Shangri-La, Whoop De Doo, Beyond My Wildest Dreams, Heart Full Of Holes, Monteleone, Remembrance Day, I Used To Could, Today Is Okay
19 in G MAJOR (G-dur): Angel Of Mercy, Two Young Lovers, When It Comes To You, Freeway Flier, Irish Boy, The Road, Father And Son, Potato Picking, The Long Road, Annick, Metroland Instrumental Theme, Drooling National, Golden Heart, Don’t You Get It, Tall Order Baby, The Other Side of the Moon, Who’s Your Baby Now, Daddy’s Gone To Knoxville, The Fizzy And The Still
23 in C MAJOR (C-dur): Portobello Belle, Hand In Hand, Love Over Gold, Wild Theme, Boomtown, Metroland, We’re Going To War, I’m The Fool, Nobody’s Got The Gun, One More Matinee, My Clame To Fame, Beachcombing, Donkey Town, All The Roadrunning, True Love Will Never Fade, Secondary Waltz, Hard Shoulder, You Can’t Beat The House, Piper To The End, Haul Away, Don’t Forget Your Hat, Corned Beef City, Hot or What
17 in D MINOR (D-moll): Sultans of Swing, Making Movies, Single Handed Sailor, Tunnel Of Love, Expresso Love, Telegraph Road, The Man’s Too Strong, Fade To Back, Think Fast, Comfort, Joy, Silvertown Blues, Your Own Sweet Way, Why Aye Man, You Don’t Know You’re Born, Sucker Row, Punish The Monkey
16 in E MINOR (E-moll): News, Follow Me Home, Private Investigations, Private Dancer, Ride Across The River, One World, My Parties, A Fistful Of Ice Cream, He’s the Man, Down Day, A Walk In Paris, She’s Gone, El Macho, Camerado, Hill Farmer’s Blues, Summer of Love
15 in A MINOR (A-moll): Six Blade Knife, Southbound Again, Once Upon A Time In The West, Where Do You Think You’re Going, On Every Street, Planet Of New Orleans, An American Hero, Tralala, No Can Do, Rudiger, Speedway At Nazareth, Say Too Much, A Place Where We Used To Live, Behind With The Rent, Before Gas And TV
14 in B MINOR (B-moll): Down to the Waterline, Lions, Millonaire Blues, Iron Hand, Just Instinct, Je Suis Desole, Baloney Again, Florin Dance, Let’s See You, Back To Tupelo, Don’t Crash The Ambulance, I Dug Up A Diamond, We Can Get Wild, Madame Geneva’s
14 in A MAJOR (A-dur): Setting me Up, Communique, Solid Rock, Industrial Disease, Twisting By The Pool, Brats, Meeting Under the Trees, A Love Idea, Working On It, Darling Pretty, Sailing To Philadelphia, Vic And Ray, A Night In Summer Long Ago, Time In The Sun
11 in F MAJOR (F-dur): Romeo And Juliet, The Ceilidh And The Northern Lights, Stargazer, Badges Posters Stickers T-Shirts, What I Have Got To Do, Quality Shoe, In The Sky, Good As Gold, Redbud Tree, Yon Two Crows, Seattle
7 in C MINOR (C-moll): Prairie Wedding, Sands Of Nevada, Fare Thee Well Northumberland, Scaffolder’s Wife, The Fish And The Bird, Border River, Early Bird
8 in B MAJOR (B-dur): Calling Elvis, Sons of Scotland, Four in a Row, Quiet Theme, Stand Up Guy, Get Lucky, Got To Have Something, Radio City Serenade
5 in G MINOR (G-moll): Money For Nothing, You And Your Friend, Marbletown, Boom Like That, The Trawlersman’s Song
4 in G-Sharp MINOR (G#-moll): Brothers in Arms, Stretching Out, Training, Rollin’ On
4 in B-Flat MINOR (Bb-moll): In the Gallery, Junkie Doll, Postcards From Paraguay, So Far From The Clyde
3 in F-Sharp MINOR (F#-moll): Wanderlust, What It Is, Two Brothers And A Stranger
8 in E-Flat MAJOR (Eb-dur): The Rocks And The Water, All That I Have in the World, 5:15 a.m., All That Matters, Privateering, Dream of The Drowned Submariner, After the Beanstalk
3 in D-Flat MAJOR (Db-dur): This Is Us, Cleaning My Gun, Pulling Down the Ride
4 in B-Flat MAJOR (Bb-dur): Done With Bonaparte, Hard Cases, Gator Blood, Blood and Water
3 in C-Sharp MINOR (C#-moll): Lady Writer, Your Latest Trick, Kingdom of Gold
2 in F-Sharp MAJOR (F#-dur): Old Pigweed, Home Boy
1 in E-Flat MINOR (Eb-moll): The New Laird, Bluebird
1 in F MINOR (F-moll): Small Potatoes
1 in A-Flat MAJOR (Ab-moll): Right Now

All 24 keys are used. Mark is like Bach Smiley

154 majors and 91 minors.

Hope it can be interesting for someone.

<<<<

Quote end

Amps, Dire Straits/ Mark Knopfler live pictures and videos, Effects, Guitars, Mark Knopfler gear

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 reason  I was sure that almost all of these pictures of the early Dire Straits era have by now appeared here or there in the web and that we won’t see many new ones anymore.

It was a nice surprise that I lately found some pictures I have not seen before, like the one of a 1977 gig covered in the last blog post, or some new pictures of the gig at the Clapham Common Bandstand in Andra Nelki’s photostream at flickr  (might be covered in one of the next blog posts), or the following seven pictures from a 1978 gig that are featured with this post.

Unknown Dire Straits  gig – about summer 1978

I am absolutely sure that these pictures are from 1978, approximately between late May and late July. I always base such assumptions on the gear: here we have the 80470 maple-board Strat over two Fender Twin Reverbs into Marshall cabs, pretty much the same setup as we see on the promotional video clips of Sultans of Swing and Wild West End (filmed June 12) or in the Revolver TV appearance (July 9). The Live at the BBC live CD and the ‘Barbarellas’ bootleg was also recorded during this time (July 19 and July 4).

Mark with his #80470 Strat – having the pickguard of his #68354 Strat, but without the black volume knob. That black tape (?) under the tremolo appeared only in mid 1978. I am not sure for what purpose it was, maybe to stop some vibration (?). It seems to be under the tremolo, otherwise I would have suspected it was to protect his hand against sharp edges of the bridge saddles (any more ideas ? – then use the comments function to tell us).

This picture shows the gear they were using at that time probably better than any other we have from this era. In the background we can see Mark’s sunburst 1966 Telecaster Custom (the earliest picture with this guitar I think), almost hidden by David but still visible is the Les Paul Special, and David’s black Telecaster Thinline.

The two Fender amps should be Twin Reverbs, both into Marshal cabs. There is another Fender amp right of these, so I would guess that Mark plays both of the Twins and David the other.

Then we can clearly see the Morley volume pedal (left) , and the green MXR analog delay (right). Mark used a spiral cable before and behind the volume pedal. I am not sure if there is “something” in front of the Morley. Also I have no idea what the silver “switch” (?) in front of the MXR is (it is not the switch of the MXR which must be behind the knobs, not in front). Left of the MXR we might see a footswitch of one of the Twin Reverbs.

In the dressing room – lots of guitar cases, the sunburst Telecaster, a Precision Bass, Pick with his practising drum kit, and Mark tuning the red Strat.

Dire Straits/ Mark Knopfler live pictures and videos, Guitars, Mark Knopfler gear

New picture of the Sultans Strat before being refinished to red

Today I found a picture showing Dire Straits live in 1977, before they recorded their first album. At this time the famous red ‘Sultans’ Strat was not refinished to red yet but still had the bare wood finish in which Mark got it (probably earlier that year). There are a few pictures around that show the guitar with this finish but all of these are of rather poor quality (and all are only black and white). On only  one you can actually see a bit of the wood grain, and this only shows a part of the guitar.

This picture now is by far the best available of the Strat with the wood finish. We can see that it already had the black volume knob (or whatever purpose the knob really had). Also it seems that  already at this time the middle poti had a knob labelled with volume instead of tone, something you can see more clearly on many later pictures.

Before being finished to red: apparently a two piece-alder body with center seam on the 1961 Sultans Strat

The picture strongly suggests that the guitar has an alder body (alder was the common wood for a ’61 Stratocaster, but some finishes like e.g. blonde often had ash bodies). It looks as if it is a two-piece body, and the seam is almost in the center, approximately at the height of the d string. Two-piece bodies are very common but the position of the seam varies. The guitar does not look very glossy but I don’t think this allows us to tell if it was some wax&oil finish or clear laquer. Unfortunately I cannot tell with certainty if it already has the DiMarzio FS-1 pickup (the length of the pole pieces is different compared to a stock vintage Strat pickup) but listening to the solo of Eastbound Train from the Hope & Anchor, which was recorded about the same time, suggests that it had.

In the background we can see the 1961 Vibrolux and we can clearly see that Mark used the bright channel of the amp. Both channels are basically identical with the exception that the right channel has a treble bleeding capacitor over the volume poti. This capacitor became switchable (‘bright switch’) later (with the introduction of the blackface amps) but on the Vibrolux one channel is without and one with the capacitor.

Note that David’s guitar also has a wood finish (and also John Illsley Precision Bass). I am almost sure that both David’s and Mark’s guitars were refinished at the same time (about late summer 1978, David’s guitar became black then). David seems to play an unwound g string as it seems, I remember seing him on some 1978 pictures with a wound g string on his Strat. The vocal microphone seems to be a Sure SM57 (these were dark/silver before they got the dark finish they had later). This mic is normally not used for vocals but Mark did so on many gigs in 1978/79. In fact if you sing at rather low volume, you can get it a bit louder on stage before getting feedback than e.g. the more common Sure SM58.

Dire Straits only played a few first gigs in 1977 and these were at only five different venues (Rock Garden, Dingwalls, Hope & Anchor, Champers Wine Bar, Loughton College). I wonder if it might be possible to tell from where the picture is, the wall in the background right suggest a rather small pub but my googling for stage pictures of these pubs was not successful yet, maybe someone else has some idea.

Amps, Mark Knopfler gear

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. While the Mesa Boogies had lots of controls and options (various push/pull knobs, EQs, different gain stages etc.), the Kelley had just 3 knobs and followed the idea of having a simple signal path without any redundant components to obtain a pure and natural sound.

The original single channel combo amp

While the Mesa Boogie made use of two different pre-amp sections that were chained in serial so that the first can overdrive the second to get high-gain distortion even at low volume, the Kelley favoured the more natural sounding distortion from the power amp. As this automatically results in high volume, the amps were often paired with a power attenuator ( a device between amp and speakers that turns a part of  the output power into heat to reduce volume).

The Kelley amps soon get very popular among session players on the US West Coast, they became the “house amplifiers” of the Shangri La studios (the place where Mark Knopfler recorded his Shangri La album decades later), and were soon exported to Japan and Gemany (by the way, the German distributor was the music shop in my hometown where I played a Kelley amp for the first time in the early 80ies). On the US East Coast they were sold at Rudy’s Music Stop in New York, where John Suhr and Jack Sonni worked at that time, who introduced this amp to Mark Knopfler. According to Jack Sonni, Mark played his Kelley amp and his foam green Schecter Strat for the recording of One World (from the Brothers in Arms album) and loved the sound so much that he used the Kelley amp on the Brothers in Arms tour (1985/86).

The two channel FACS head - note the power attenuator on top of the amp

The model Jack Sonni and Mark Knopfler used was the dual channel amp, the FACS (for foot activated channel switching). These amps were available as combo or head (Knopfler and Sonni used the heads) and had two identical pre amps so that each can be adjusted for a different sound, with a reverb control for each channel. As the idea of the Kelley’s distortion sound was to overdrive the output stage, different gain settings would automatically lead to different volume. Here the attenuator comes in, which was activated when switching to the overdriven channel so that you can match the volume to your needs.

 Technical stuff

Each channel has a gain, treble, bass, and reverb control (from left to right). The treble control can be pulled to act as a bright switch, while pulling the bass control adds a mid boost. Pulling the gain control on channel one – which was intended as a the overdrive channel and is paired with tghe power attenuator – allows you to switch the channels without the foot switch, pulling out the gain control of the second channel enables a presence boost.

The output stage uses four 6V6 tubes and can be switched to 30 or 60 watts, while 12AX7 tubes were used in the pre , as phase inverter, and to drive the reverb. The Brothers in Arms tour was one of the longest tours a major rock band ever did, and thus surely meant a particular stress for the gear. This lead to some tube failures so that Jack Sonni finally changed to a Seymour Duncan convertable amp towards the end of the tour which seems more reliable.

The FACS - from a Guitar Player feature

Unfortunately there aren’t any pictures that show Mark’s amps as these were placed behind the stage where they could be operated by a technician. You can see one of these – probably Jack Sonni’s – on the video of the Live Aid concert in July 1985. The pictures do not show Knopfler’s amp but similar ones.

Amps, Guitars, Mark Knopfler gear

Guitar and amp used for the solos on One World

I recently got a reliebable information about the guitar and the amp that Mark used for the solos in the song One World of Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms album (studio version, 1985).

I put up a quiz with five possible question for you to find out the answer, hoping this way you have some fun and can check if your ears and general knowledge are good enough to let you guess the correct answer.

I don’t know which comments will be made and if the solution will be discussed there, so better do not look at these before doing the quiz.

Question:

What was the guitar and the amp on "One world" (solos, studio version) ?

Guitars, Mark Knopfler gear

A trip to Mark Knopfler’s sunburst Schecter Strat

The good thing about running a website about Mark Knopfler and his guitar sound and style is that you get in touch with so many other people who share your interest. I guess everyone who is really interested in this topic sooner or later finds his way to this site. So it happened that one day a customer who bought two of my iSounds in my online shop told me that he owns quite a lot of guitars, one of them being the Schecter S8001 – that sunburst Dream Machine Strat that probably everyone of us knows from his teens on, the guitar used in e.g. the Alchemy video on songs  like Tunnel of Love or Telegraph Road. The guitar was auctioned at Eric Clapton’s Crossroads charity for more than 50,000 USD in 2004  (Note: The owner now – let’s call him O. for owner –  is not the person who won the charity but got the guitar later from him).

As O. lives only a couple of hours by car from my place, the idea to visit him came up automatically.

So it happened that I went on a short trip to his place a few weeks ago. O. is a huge MK fan and a guitar collector. I can tell you his collection is beyond being amazing :), including lots of vintage Fenders, Gibsons, and Schecters, also many amps, and much more.

Mark Knopfler’s sunburst Schecter Strat (2012, click to enlarge). With courtesy of guitarmotel.net

 

 

Playing the Alchemy Schecter

I guess you can easily imagine that the moment when O. opened the guitar case was very special for me. The guitar still looks as it did when we saw it the last time, on the pictures for the Crossroads auction in 2004, and thus pretty much as it looked in 1986 when we saw it on stage the last time. The condition is great, not much worn after being played on so many Dire Straits concerts, with exception of the gold plating on the pickguard. This is a problem of all the golden vintage Schecter pickguards. Applying a gold plating to something as big as a pickguard is extremely expensive, with the gold price itself being the relevant cost factor. Gold plating is the more durable the thicker the coat is, which means a 5 micrometers coat is 10 times more durable than one of 0.5 micrometer, but unfortunately also 10 times as expensive – and we areeasily  talking about hundreds of dollars (!!) just for the gold here. This is the reason why already on Alchemy – two years after Mark got  the guitar – the pickguard was worn at the places where Mark used to  rest his right hand.

I was allowed to play the guitar. I played some expensive vintage guitars in my life, so touching a 50,000 dollars guitar was not such a problem (of course you must not think about  what would happen if you accidentally drop the guitar …). It had been in the case for some time so it was totally out of tune. After tuning it we plugged it into a Tone King Imperial. It is a really great sounding guitar, with a very warm and full sound. The question which probably comes up automatically is, do you sound like Mark on Tunnel of Love or Telegraph Road just because of the guitar? Well, the answer – you can probably guess – is ‘no, not really’ – it is all in the fingers and the rest of the signal chain. If you have a blindfold on your eyes and someone plays the guitar, you will not say ‘That’s the one from Tunnel of Love‘. But – the other way around – after playing the guitar I can often hear the same tonal characteristics on the old recordings with this guitar, e.g.  a particular warmth or a typical sustain.

(click to enlarge), with courtesy of guitarmotel.net

The guitar is not a lightweight – it is from a time when heavy wood and brass parts were considered as superior – and in fact these ingredients cause a special sound.

I took many photos of the guitar. Unfortunately I cannot publish these, especially detail photos. The reason is that O. is afraid of giving food to people who fake vintage guitars – here he is not thinking of people ‘like us’ who might make a luthier build a clone of Mark’s Schecter to play with a tribute band but of those who sell fakes as real stuff on ebay. I could convince myself that this is in fact a serious matter when he showed me one of ‘my pickguards‘ that was sold to someone as a real vintage Schecter  pickguard (and my pickguards are really not intended to fool someone, e.g. the pickups all have the manufacturer’s label on the bottom plate but these were simply sanded off !).

Still I can show you two new pictures of the guitar in this blog post –  please don’t ask for more.

When I was fifteen and saw this guitar for the first time during my first Dire Straits concert, I would not have believed that one day I will play on it myself.

Check out this blog post that features some videos in which you can watch me playing the guitar.

Dire Straits/ Mark Knopfler live pictures and videos, Misc, MK guitar style and licks

Albert Lee – a recent live version of Setting me up

I think I wrote a blog post about Albert Lee’s cover of Setting me up from the first Dire Straits album before (see here). Today I surfed into this video clip on youtube which I really like a lot. It is a bit on the slow side, much slower than e.g. Albert’s live version that was featured on Eric Clapton’s Just one Night live album. It seems the older you get the slower you play but with more emphasis on the groove and on details. Reminds me on Mark’s recent versions of  Telegraph Road which is also much slower these days but so rich of new details and has such a nice flowing feel.

Albert Lee, originally one of THE Telecaster heroes, switched to a Music Man signature model a long time ago. Speaking of Music Man, just like Mark Albert played Music Man amps – often a 4×10 combo – in the late 70ies and early 80ies. On this clip we hear him over a Fender amp, seems to be a  Tone Master.

While Mark used to  play Setting me up in an open A tuning (some years later he changed to standard tuning) , Albert always played it in standard tuning and in the key of D (the Dire Straits version is A).

Enjoy 🙂