Guitars, Mark Knopfler gear, Misc, Vintage guitars

MK-Guitar.com presents: Loaded Schecter F400-style pickguard

I am proud to announce a brand new product which will be available exclusively on this site in the very near future.

For a long time those vintage Schecter pickguards, loaded with the sought-after F500T tapped Schecter pick-ups, have been the ultimate tool to convert your guitar into something similar to the legendary Schecter Dream Machines, or as a start point to build a high-end custom Strat. With those three mini switches and the tapped pick-ups you can select from not less than 27 pick-up combinations, ranging from the classic Strat sounds to fat p90-like blues sounds.

The loaded Schecter F400 pickguards came with the Dream Machines, or were available separately to upgrade your Strat in the 70ies and early 80ies. Anyway, they are extremely rare and for this reason almost impossible to get. No wonder that used items have sold for up to 1,500 USD on ebay since then.

Here they are again – exclusively on MK-Guitar.com

I had the idea to build one of these for myself but I soon found out that the price will be astronomical for two reasons: most of those fancy parts like for example the American flat-lever mini switches or the conductive plastic potis are hard to get, and if so only in certain quantities. Also, some jobs like constructing the pickguard in AutoCAD to get a vector file that controls certain high-tech machinery imply an enormous amount of work and time, and would not pay for just one single board. So the idea of a small production run was born.


Highest quality only

The core idea of Schecter was to offer upgrade parts for your guitar, and as an upgrade these need to be of superior quality. Mind that a complete Schecter Dream Machine was never considered as as Strat copy because even back then it cost a multiple of the price for a US Fender Strat. Everything was made with finest parts. The potis for example were not simply some potis, they were US made conductive plastic potis for extended life, fully dust capsuled. When you turn them, they do not feel like a crappy Chinese poti found in many guitars these days. Instead, they have that creamy tight feel you associate with the volume knob of an expensive  HIFI amplifier. We have them again!
Or those mini switches: they are still available today but normally they have a round lever instead of the flat one. I indeed found Asian switches with flat levers that look alright but if you compare them with the real stuff, they simply feel different, they rattle, and – call me a snob – when you switch them, the “click” sound is different than with the US switches. Finally I managed to get hold of US made switches, they cost me three times as much as the Asia stuff but it is worth the price. I even got those  fancy round dress nuts for the switches, essential for the authentic look.

Flat-lever switches with dress nuts

Hand-wound finest custom pick-ups by Harry Häussel

Another problem were the pick-ups. The original Schecter F500T was a tapped pick-up for both the classic Strat sound and a fat, warmer lead sound. The ones you see on ebay are extremely expensive, or often defective. It seems many of them have problems after some decades, something which is also true for 50ies Fender pick-ups. A few companies, e.g. Seymour Duncan, still make pick-ups that are somewhat similar to the F500T. However, similar was not enough for me, so I teamed up with one of Europe’s hottest pick-up winding gurus – Harry Häussel – to come up with something superior. Those of you who know Harry’s outstanding vintage Fender replicas will not be surprised to hear that our pick-ups are made with real love and attention to even smallest details. They have the same kind of magnets, the same winding wire, the same winding method. I even got American gauge cables of the same colours – black, yellow, and purple –  simply because the European cable gauges looked too skinny, or were too fat.

Tapped pick-ups with those big Alnico magnets

What you get

Our loaded pickguards should fit on all Strat-sized guitars (8 holes like vintage Schecter).

* Made of solid brass (alternatively white aluminium), professionally high-tech cut to our specifications in Germany, professionally polished for that magic, shiny look.

* Hand-wound pick-ups for that F500T sound. Magnets, wires, winding etc.,  like vintage Schecter. These are definitely not the cheapest but the best!

* Two US high-quality square potis, conductive plastic, extended life, just like vintage Schecter (in fact by one of the two suppliers that Schecter had, the other one  is out of business)

* Three US-made flat-lever mini toggle switches, with dress nuts, just like vintage Schecter

* Tone capacitor and treble bleeding capacitor with resistor, like vintage Schecter.

Price:  to be announced soon (Update: 419,- €)

Availabilty: coming soon (Update: first pickguards shipping)

See product in our shop:

And here the original, a real vintage Schecter

 

... and another vintage Schecter. Compare to the previous picture and note that Schecter used switches and potis from different manuafacturers.
The backside of the Pensa MK-80 pickguard looks quite different
MK guitar style and licks

Jamming over “Dire Straits – In the Gallery” groove loop

For some weeks I have been playing around with a Boss RC-50 loop station. The RC-50 allows you to record your own playing and play it as a loop. This way you can create multiple sound layers, and then jam to it. A really nice tool that makes a lot of fun.

Here I am live recording a rhythm guitar and a bass over a drum rhythm from the RC-50, similar to the groove of In the Gallery from Dire Straits’ first album. The guitar is a part-o-caster with an old Squier body and neck , the bass is an old Precision Bass.

Everything was monitored over a Music Man RP 112 RP amp, and recorded with the microphone of the video camera. There are no effects except some reverb from the amp.

Mark Knopfler gear, Misc

The Vox Vintage Coil Cord – and why I love spiral guitar cables

When I started playing the guitar in 1979, spiral guitar cables were common. Many players favoured these spiral – or coil(ed) – cables because it is very handy not to have meters of cables lying on the floor between your feet and your effects. The spiral cable shortens automatically to a few feet, while it allows distances up to several meters when stretched out, and they don’t wrap themselves after turning around a few times such as normal cable does. Last not least, I always found they look cool.

The black Vox Vintage Coil cable with silver plug with 24k gold-plated contacts

I am not really sure why they got out of fashion a few years later, so much that for decades  it was almost impossible to get a long high-quality spiral cable. I was surprised to see them back a few years ago, when Vox presented their Vintage Coil Cord. Fender also has one again. In fact the Vox cable looks pretty much exactly as the cable that Mark Knopfler played live when he started Dire Straits, so I tried to get hold of them. Unfortunately it turned out that they were not available in Germany, and shipping them from the US meant high additional costs. I finally got some from the German distributor that were left over after a music fair. I use them live and for recording since then.

What I like about this cable is the look, the feel, and the sound. It is really true that different cables sound different. This is not vodoo thinking but based on a few technical facts about pick-up design. With these cables the sound becomes smoother with some nice bite in the upper mids. I am not sure if this has to do with Vox’s multi-core design forthis cable – different cores for different frequencies – or if it is just the result of the electrical specs. Anyway, it sounds good.

The sound of the cable is especially important when using two of these, before and after a passive effect, like Mark Knopfler apparently did in the late 7oies. With an active effect device, only the cable before the device matters, but with e.g. the Morley volume pedal, both will affect the sound, to be concrete, the capacity of both cables adds and transforms the pick-up’s resonance peak, adding some high mids.

This and the next picture prove that one spiral cable was before and one after the Morley volume pedal.

The cable is very reliable. I guess spiral cables were phased out because they can be damaged when you step on them very hard, thus bending the coiled cable to some radius smaller then allowed, which makes the cable break or the shielding loose. The Vox cable, however, is very strong so that it will not be harmed when stepping on it (something I nevertheless try to avoid). Even after using it for a few years now, none of mine makes noises when moving the cable, or shows any other problems.

I recently got some of these great cables which I can offer at a great price in this site’s online shop. Check them out!

MK guitar style and licks

Money for Nothing on Guitar Hero Warriors of Rock

The new Guitar Hero Warriors of Rock features Dire Straits – Money for Nothing from the Brothers In Arms CD (1985).

We had a lot of fun and many valuable insights with Sultans of Swing from this game some months ago. This one is also a great listen for all of us MK-style guitar players since hearing the guitar(s) alone lets you hear so many details that are lost behind the other instruments in the mix. I especially love that rhythm riff Mark plays only in the verses, but also all those licks in the refrain are great. So buy yourself a game console like Playstation 3, Wii or Xbox, and this great new game.

Here – as an appetizer – some short extracts from the the two riff guitars.


Simply click on the blue progress bar to make the player play a different part of the song.

Note that in the intro and the first verse there is only one guitar that is doubled with some delay. From the first refrain on, we have two separate guitar tracks. As these are panned left and right, you just need to set your monitors so that only one channel is played to hear these alone.


Guitar in general, Guitars

The volume pot – what is the right resistance and how does it affect the sound of a guitar pick-up

In forums I often read questions about different volume pots and the best value they should have. A normal Fender Strat pot has 250 kOhms, but 1MOhms (=1000 k Ohms) is used on Telecasters, while Gibson often uses 500 kOhms. And then there are the no-load pots,  so all in all it seems there is some confusion about what to use best, and what effect a different pot value will have.

To start with, pots of all values will do the same in a guitar: adjusting the volume from 0 % to 100 %. Their value has (almost) nothing to do with the resulting highest possible volume, nor has it to do with the ‘volume curve’ that describes how fast the volume changes from 0 – 100% (the so-called taper, which is described with terms like linear or logarithmic). There is only one thing affected by the pot resistance: the height of the pick-up’s resonance peak. So, what on earth is this?

The resonance peak

A guitar pick-up normally consists of a coil around some magnets. Such a construction does not have a linear sound – which means not all frequencies are transduced at the same volume. Instead, there is normally a certain frequency that appears much louder than all others – this peak is called resonance peak, its frequency is the resonance frequency. Note that frequencies higher than the resonance frequency are hardly transduced at all (they become lower with 12dB per octave), see the following image:

Picture courtesy H. Lemme

The height of this peak and the exact position of that resonance frequency depend on the pick-up’s construction details.Stronger magnets might have a higher resonance peak, while a metal cap of a Gibson humbucker or telecaster neck pick-up dampens the peak. Generally a pick-up with more windings has a lower resonance frequency. It also depends on the guitar cable since a shielded cable – and guitar cables are always shielded – behaves like a capacitor, and a capacitor shifts down the resonance peak. A Fender Stratocaster pick-up for example has its resonance peak at about 7 kHz without guitar cable, but just about 3 or 4 kHz (!) with an average guitar cable – the longer or thinner the cable, the lower the resonance frequency.

If we now put a resistor in parallel to the guitar pick-up – this is called ‘load’ – , it will decrease the height of the resonance peak, in other words it will dampen the peak, see the following graph:

The volume pot load can drastically change the frequency response of the pick-up. Read below why this however often hardly matters within your setup. (Picture courtesy H. Lemme)

A volume pot divides the signal voltage produced by the pick-up in accordance to the pot position. But no matter which the position the pot is at, the load is always the full resistance of the pot , and thus this value will dampen the resonance peak.

What does it mean to my guitar sound?

Damping the resonance peak means that a part of the treble range is decreased, so we have less treble. Note however that the resonance peak itself is not a ‘natural’ thing but an artefact caused by the pick-up. Seen from this perspective a dampened resonance peak will sound more linear, thus maybe more natural. In fact the resonance peak causes a certain colour to the sound – typically a presence boost that can help to promote clarity, but also can lead to a harsh sound (ever had aching ears from a clean Fender pick-up at high volumes?).  So dampening the resonance peak can sound bad or good – depending on the situation and of what you are looking for.

Which value for which sound?

Especially for clear sounds, I like the sweeter sound of the dampened resonance peak better than that harsh, trebly sound. For this reason I prefer a smaller value of the volume pot. Years ago I tried out 1 MOhms pots in a Strat which I found terrible. However, this value might be okay for a Telecaster since the metal cap of the Tele neck pick-up dampens the height of the resonace peak anyway, and dampening it even more might overdo it. On the other hand those typical squealing, microphonic noises of a (sometimes poorly waxed) Telecaster pick-up usually get worse with a high pot value, in fact that whistling feedback will typically start directly at the resonance frequency of the pick-up, so a smaller value might mean less pick-up feedback (which must not be confused with the wanted ‘string feedback’).

The ‘no-load’ pots work like an off-switch at the last part of the rotary. They are intended to be used as tone pot and cannot really be used as volume pot, so let’s forget about these here.

The low input impedance of the Morley volume pedal will make the guitar sound sweeter at all volume positions because it adds an additional load to the guitar pick-up. The load of your effect devices can make the difference between a 250 or 500 kOhms volume pot almost non-existent.

Now forget about all this again because…

The volume pot is not the only part which puts a load (= a resistance parallel to the pick-up) on the pick-up. Also the input resistance of the first device that follows the guitar in the signal chain adds to the total load (and if the first device is a passive device, the input resistance of the next devices will also put more load on the pick-up). To be concrete, both loads will not simply add (in the sense of 250kOhms + 500 kOhms = 750 kOhms) but will follow the formula for resistors in parallel: R-total = (R1 * R2) / (R1+ R2) , with R1 and R2 being the two resistor values. Thus e.g. a 250 kOhms and 500 kOhms will result in a total load of 166.7 kOhms (note that the total is less than the individual values of the two resistors used).

This is the reason why in a real-life set-up the value of the volume pot might become irrelevant. Let’s say the first effect device has an input resistance of 100 KOhms (they normally have a few hundreds, but there are some like a Morley volume pedal, or an Orange Squeezer compressor that are even below 100 kOhms) . Exchanging a 250 kOhms volume pot for a 1 MOhms pot (= 1000 kOhms) will result in a mere change from 71 to 91 kOhms of the total load, and it is this total value that matters.

So, only if you go directly into a high impedance input (high load), e.g. a tube amp typically has 1 MOhms, you will get a major change of the resonance peak height.

Years ago a friend of mine had a ’71 Stratocaster which sounded absolutely great. Besides being very resonant, it sounded sweeter, less harsh, when directly A/B compared to other Strats, going directly into the amp. And we had an original ’62 Strat which for some reason sounded harsher than normal. In fact the volume pots had been replaced on both of them, the ’71 had a mere 100 KOhms, the ’62 had something I measured to be about 800 KOhms.

Conclusion

* The value of the volume pot affects the tone because it has an effect on the height of the resonance peak.

* A smaller value might sound sweeter and not neccessarily duller than a higher value, which might sound harsh in some situations.

* It is the total load that matters – not alone the value of the volume pot. This is why exchanging the pot can have almost no effect, at least it is nothing I use to worry about.

Guitars, Mark Knopfler gear, Vintage guitars

The Schecter Story: Schecter Guitar Research – Dream Machines – The Van Nuys Era

In the 80ies, Mark Knopfler was probably the most famous user of Schecter guitars. He bought several Schecters in 1980 at Rudy’s Music Stop in New York, mainly because he was looking for a guitar that was easier to play and better suited for the high demands on the road than the vintage Fenders he played before. Also his former girl-friend played a Schecter which he said was much better than his Fender guitars.

So what was the story behind the Schecter company?

Schecter Guitar Research started around 1976 in Van Nuys, California, when David Schecter opened his repair and custom guitar shop. He soon started to produce his own quality guitar parts which were intended to replace some stock parts on common guitars. Especially the Fender Stratocaster and Telecaster were the ideal guitar to be hot-rodded, since all their parts could be replaced much easier than with the laminated constructions that Gibson used, and the quality of Fender guitars was possibly at the lowest in the Fender history.

We got it all - a Schecter ad from 1979

Because of their background as supplier of upgrade parts, Schecter soon was mainly known for

(a) exotic woods

Unlike Fender who build their guitars from rather common woods (ash, elder, maple,..), Schecter specialized in beautiful exotic woods, like Shedua, Koa, Cocobola, Pau Fero, Mahogany, Rosewood, Purple Heart, or figured maple (necks), or Red Oak, Paduak, Zebrawood, Teak, Koa, Anjico, Imbuya, and many more (bodies). As you see, trading with protected tropical woods was not an issue in the 70ies yet.

All necks were one-piece which means they did not have a separate fingerboard (as Mark Knopfler’s red Tele had, but this was a very late model). They had 21 frets, 22 frets were a later trend started by heavy metal guitarists in the 80ies. If you upgraded your guitar with such a beautiful exotic wood, you don’t want to hide it behind a solid finish, consequently the typical Schecter guitar was bare wood, or an oil finish, although laquer was offered for additional charge.

exotic woods for necks, from left to right: Pau Fero, Shedua, Cocobola

(b) brass hardware

In the seventies it was common believe that a guitar should ideally be rather heavy in order to have a lot of sustain. Surprisingly today many players prefer light-weighted woods, and talk rather about tone than sustain. One way to improve sustain – which means how long a note will last – was to replace the steel hardware with brass hardware. For this reason not only Schecter but also Mighty Mite – the second big parts supplier – and Fender themselves offered brass hardware as an upgrade in the late 70ies. Fender even released an upgraded Stratocaster with the model name The Strat in 1980 that came with a brass bridge, a brass nut, and matching brass knobs. By the way, Schecter also supplied the big manufactureres like Fender and Gibson with parts, so possibly some of the brass master series parts by Fender were actually produced by Schecter.

(c) beefed-up pick-ups

In the 70ies, there were hardly any high-gain amps, again something that was more a child of the 80ies. Nevertheless, the first amp manufacturers or amp repair specialists were successful with offering high-gain mods, e.g. the first Mesa Boogies based on a Fender circuit that was modified to have more distortion. Another way to increase the distortion abilities was to replace the stock Fender pick-ups with overwound pick-ups. This was what DiMarzio started in the early 70ies. Instead of the common 7,000-8,000 windings you simply put much more on a Stratocaster pick-up. This way the pick-up became louder and had less treble but more mids. The drawback: you would loose the original Strat sound which was great for clear sounds. Here David Schecter came in with the invention of the F500T pick-up, the first successful tapped pick-up. Tapped means that the F500T was a beefed-up pick-up with almost twice as much windings than a standard Fender pick-up, but it had a tap after the normal number of windings, so you could “switch off” the second half of the coil so to say. For this reason the pick-up did not have the normal two cables but three (ground, half coil, full coil). The pick-up coils were switched by three mini switches with three positions each (tapped, off, full), instead of the Fender 5-way switch.

The assembled Schecter F400T pickguard often sells for over 1,000 € on ebay

The Dream Machines

After a few years Schecter was very successful and their product range had grown so that they actually had each part of a Fender guitar in their catalogue. So it was nothing but the next logical step to offer complete guitars. These were put together by one of their qualified retailers (e.g. Rudy’s Music Stop was one of them), and marketed as Dream Machines. The five Strats (red, red, blue, sunburst, plus replacement sunburst) and the black Tele were Dream Machines. The red Tele as well, but he got this about 3 or 4 years later.

Schecter Dream Machine

Some more detail difference between a dream machine and a stock Fender (except the points mentioned above): two strap pins at the bottom (Schecters were often heavy, and this way the player could change the balance by using one or the other pin), metal pickguards, only two knobs (one volume, one tone), treble-bleed capacitor to reduce treble loss when reducing volume (similar to the telecaster circuit), two long-life plastic conductor potis, and sometimes no fingeboard dots.

The end of the era

About 1983 Schecter was sold to – officially – a group of Texan investors, who moved over the business to Dallas, Texas. They still offered parts and complete guitars, but the quality was apparently different to what it was before. Here is an inofficial insider story I read in a forum:

One of the laeding sales guys at Schecter had origins in the ‘meat-packing industry’ – some weird people who made obscure deals. Before being accused of spreading false rumour, I prefer to quote the following:

“They basically write contracts to people that wanna save money on their meat purchases, by buying 1/2 a cow, and getting the cut and packed into convenient sizes. Don’t have a freezer big enough? They’ll sell you a freezer too, just sign the contract. Then they sell the contract to a finance company. If they get too many complaints, they simply move their operation to another county or another state.

Apparently, Shel didn’t use their investment money very wisely, and the meat-packers were getting pissed. I don’t know whether it was before, during, or after this problem, but at some point, Dave [Schecter] decided he had enough and split (or was forced out; that part is still unclear to me), leaving the company in Shel’s hands. At some point the meat-packing investors decided that they had had enough, too.

One night. around midnight, they showed up in meat delivery trucks at Schecter after the place had closed, broke the locks, went in, and grabbed everything they could grab: guitars, pickups, winding machines, office furniture, everything that wasn’t bolted down (and a few things that were), loaded their trucks and split – for Dallas, Texas.”

So according to this source, the whole Schecter Californian shop was robbed out and the inventory sold from Dallas. This would explain why the Dallas era guitars still have many identical parts while other parts seem to be from other sources, and the overall quality was lacking.

Later the name Schecter was sold to a Japanese investor who moved back the company to California. The new Schecter company made many original models,aiming mainly at the heavy metal scene. It seems besides the name this company has nothing to do with the original Schecter company.

Mark Knopfler gear, Misc

Fender discontinued the 150 super light strings

After almost 40 years, Fender recently dropped the 15o SL strings from their product range. For me bad news because the 150 SL (pure nickel, 008, 011, 014, 022, 030, 038) are the strings of choice on most of my Stratocasters.

08-strings had their popularity peak surely some decades ago. They were favoured especially among country players since thin strings made all those fancy banjo-style rolls and licks easier and faster. When players like Stevie Ray Vaughn promoted  heavy strings, 08 became rare and were often no longer on stock in most smaller shops.

I started to experiment with strings thinner than 09 amost 20 years ago. Two things I especially liked about them were the thinner g- string because with vintage-style Strat pick-ups (staggered pole pieces) an 016 always seemed too loud for me compared to the 011 b-string, and I like the sound of the thinner wound strings, especially the d and a strings.

It was however just a few years ago that I got a hint that Mark Knopfler might have played 08s on the early Dire Straits stuff.

By the way, Fender also dropped the 010-038 set some time ago (010, 013, 05, 026, 032, 038) which I personally liked better than 010-013-017… .

At least I don’t have to worry about not getting 08 nickel wound strings anymore because Fender still have them with that bullet end at a slightly higher price (3150 SL). I also noticed that they still have the 09, 011,015, 024, 032, 040 set (originally known as 150 extra lights, the strings Mark played on the Making Movies tour) which are now denoted as 150XL, while 150L is now 09,011,016,024,032,042.

Knopfler himself has meanwhile moved to heavier string as we know, and plays 010s (or heavier) on most of his electric guitars now. At least on Sultans of Swing and Romeo & Juliet he still played a signature MK Strat with 09s, but even on these songs he tried out 010s on the last tour.

Amps, Easy stuff for beginners, Effects, Guitar in general, Guitars, Mark Knopfler gear, Misc, Misc, MK guitar style and licks, Vintage guitars

New site shop launched

Some of you might already have noticed that this site has its own shop since a few days. You can enter the shop with the MK-Guitar.com Shop button on the right side of the header section.

After some initial beta testing I am proud to announce that you can  buy stuff like

* Gear (partly vintage stuff)

Ernie Balls, Morleys, effects, instruments … mostly used, ocassionally new stuff
Not too much yet, but I hope to offer some more nice stuff here in the future (check regularly since these things are normally single items, first come, first serve…)

* My backing tracks

Many asked in the past for these, they are the ones I created to use on some of my youtube videos.
Note that I finally sorted out all legal aspects and can now offer these  legally here, which means with buying these you will not only support this site, but also MK himself 😉
If some of the articles of this blog were helpful for you in the past, you can now say thank you by simply buying one or more of these tracks alternatively to the Buy-me -a-beer thing below the posts.

At the moment there are only three backing tracks (Brothers in Arms, Six Blade Knife, Wild West End) but I have the following tracks already in personal use, still need to fix some final details: Sultans of Swing (long version), Romeo & Juliet (like on recent live versions), Song for Sonny Liston, Setting me up, Southbound Again (live  “boogie” version), Down to the Waterline

* Fan Items

I have a few spare copies of some of the Dire Straits books and stuff like that.

* Planned: Own products

Yes, there are actually some nice things in the pipeline …

* Planned: Video Tutorials & eBooks

There are occasionally some weird tricks, techniques, patterns etc. which I learned to play after actually studying these things since I started to play guitar in 1979. Please understand that I am not necessarily keen on giving *everything* away for free e.g. on youtube, but I decided to offer all I know in some kind of video tutorials.  I am still working on conceptual details, watch out for things to come.

Also note that I meanwhile reduced my regular job (one reason … to have more time for things like this site…) so it makes sense that this site might generate some income – the more, the more time for it in the future 🙂

Of course there will still be more free stuff on youtube as well.

Planned: Use the shop to sell your stuff

If you now or at any time want to sell any MK related gear, you might also want to offer it in this shop. This way you might reach an interested audience and the stuff can reside there as long as it takes to get a decent price. You don’t need to ship stuff to me of course, just use the shop as a platform to find a buyer. You can contact me in case for details.

I hope you will have fun browsing the store. Use the comment function of this article for suggestions or opinions.

Amps, Effects, Guitars, Mark Knopfler gear, Misc, Recording

Trying to recreate that Sultans of Swing sound – The gear I used on the Puresolo competition.

Like many others,  I recorded an entry for the Puresolo competition (you could play your solo over one of the following backing tracks:  Sulans of Swing, Calling Elvis, or Speedway at Nazareth). I always find it a bit frustrating to take part in such a competition because as it seems nobody knows before who decides basing on what criteria (authenticity, accuracy, originality, creativity, …??) Anyway, as the backing track was really great – the original recording of  Sultans of Swing without the lead guitar –  I simply used the opportunity to try how close I can get to the sound of the original. Note that you had to record the guitar with Puresolo’s software which did not allow you to fix mistakes later, so you had to play the whole song in one part and leave in all mistakes, or try it again with a second attempt.

Instead of a link to the competition entry, you will find a  player module with my version  at the end of  this post, mainly because Puresolo only plays back uploaded stuff in a horrible quality (something like 64 kbs). The guitar sound is surely not 100% as the original but closer to it than any of my previous attempts so I thought you might be interested in some details on the gear and settings.

The gear I used

I first played a few guitars I had here to see which one sounds closest over the backing track. I originally felt to go for one with a maple neck, but finally my ’62 Strat with rosewood fingeroard had something the others had not. This does not mean that Mark also played his rosewood Fender Strat instead of his maple-neck, you can never be sure of these things.

A Fender Stratocaster

I first played the guitar through a Morley volume pedal which makes the sound generally sweeter (it takes out some harshness) but for this particular recording I felt I need a lot of treble, so I left out the pedal. For the same reason a Fender Pro Reverb made it compared to an old Music Man amp. I dialed in enough treble and put on the bright switch. The sound was much brighter than I normally play here in the room but sounded alright over the backing track.

A Fender Pro Reverb - I dialed in a lot of treble

I tried an exciter effect – an old Pearl Thriller – which made the sound even shine a bit more.The last effects I used was some chorus and a limiter. Here I took a software plug-in from my Creamware Scope system.

Pearl Thriller - a clone of the Aphex Exciter effect
A subtle chorus effect - speed was rather slow
I lately prefer a limiter over a compressor

I used an old Schoeps CM64 tube microphone which sounded sweeter than the Shure SM 57.

The position and angle of the microphone

Which Pick-Ups?

The next decision was the pick-up combination to use. Normally you’d say Sultans of Swing was the bridge & middle pick-up. I am still not sure what it was but bridge & middle definitely did not sound right here. The middle pick-up alone was too sharp, so I ended with the neck & middle pick-ups. However, note that this Strat has a Dimarzio FS-1 in the neck position, and this pick-up has a totally different impedance than a stock Fender Strat pick-up. This is why it does not sound as nasal when you play it together with another pick-up.

I had rather thin (08) strings on the guitar, maybe too thin. I also did not more experimenting to get that little bit of distortion that seems to be on the original recording. It sounds like an abrupt clipping, maybe from the desk (?!).

So, here is the result in uncompromised sound quality (MP3 320 kbs) as I can hear it from my hard disk. Unfortunately Puresolo compressed everything down to 64 kbs directly after the upload, what a shame since some of the entries are really great!


Simply click on the blue progress bar to make the player play a different part of the song.

Effects, Mark Knopfler gear

Ernie Ball volume pedal modification to make the taper like it was with the old Allen Bradley poti

Regular readers of this blog might know my first article about the different behaviour of Mark Knopfler’s Ernie Ball volume pedal compared to recent Ernie Ball models. In short: In the 80ies  a different poti was used that caused a completely different sweep curve than later ones (see diagram below).

Knopfler’s pedal changes volume drastically over the first part of the pedal sweep range. This allows him to perform the violin-like fade-in notes he is famous for with much more intensity than the new pedals.

Also, during the last part of the pedal sweep – from middle to full – Knopfler’s pedal changes the volume only moderately which means you can adjust the overall volume of the guitar much more precisely than with the new pedal. Let’s say you want to set the level to something like 80% (which Knopfler often does), the new models require a pedal position  that must be accurate to a tiny fraction of an inch, just a bit more and you are instantly at 90%, a tiny bit less and you are at 70% or even less. I found this extremely difficult to perform with your foot while playing and singing. Knopfler’s pedal can be rolled back for an inch to have the desired level, half an inch more and you might have 85%, half an inch less and you are still at let’s say 75%, so it is much easier to adjust.

Again:

Old style: great change in the first, small change in the second half of pedal sweep –> great for fade-ins, great to adjust volume
New style: small change in the first, great change in the second half of pedal sweep –> less intense fade-ins, difficult to adjust volume

Knopfler himself is aware of the problem so his roadie Ron Eve (or was it already Glenn Saggers?) just bought the remaining stock of the old potis from Ernie Ball to have replacements for all times.

My findings and measurements in detail

I have examined Ernie Ball pedals from the last decades but almost all had the new type of volume curve. I just managed to find one from 1986 which seems to behave like Knopfler’s, while my 1989 is already wrong. Surprisingly both the 1986 and the 1989 have an Allen Bradley poti, both made in Mexico. Later they came with a Canadian poti, today with one from Japan (custom-built by Tocos). I took a lot of measurements to see what really happens (diagram below), and found that all the newer potis behave almost identically.

Left to right: 1989 Allen Bradley poti - 1996 Canadian poti - the new Tocos poti

Unfortunately the original poti is no longer produced 🙁 . Allen Bradley was sold in the 80ies and soon stopped making them. The original type is – as I found out – extremely sought-after, in other words almost impossible to get. In addition, Ernie Ball changed some details of the pedal itself – e.g. to accommodate the new potis which have metrical threads instead of inch threads – so a direct replacement is often impossible anyway. Since these potis were all designed for heavy-duty usage (“extended life”), replacing it with some ordinary poti wouldn’t be a good idea – and possibly not easy anyway.

Knopfler has an Allen Bradley poti - note however that these look identical to the later Allen Bradley potis that had the wrong curve

The taper switch on some newer Ernie Ball pedals

Ernie Ball reacted to the situation and implemented a switch which enables two different volume curves, something that seems like a solution. However, my measurements showed me that it in fact changes the curve, but not really to what it was with the old poti. If you look at the diagram you will see what I mean. Besides, with the additional 220k resistor the taper switch puts in, you will lose a bit more treble, too (by the way, this is the reason you cannot simply increase the value of the resistor to make the curves more similar).

Quote from the Ernie Ball website FAQs on the problem

Q:I recently had you guys rebuild my older EB Volume Pedal and the new pot does not distribute the volume like the old pot did. Is this correct?
A: We have used at least 4 different companies to custom-build our potententiomers since the pedal’s inception in the 70’s. Since 1998, we have been using Tocos pots, which we feel are among the very best available today. However, they do have a different “sweep” than the older pots do. On top of the fact that potentiometers in general have very wide tolerances, the fact that upon rebuild we are removing one vendors pot and replacing it with another, there will be some obvious differences in the pedal’s sound. Here’s the scoop: we no longer stock the pots of old, not only because we can’t get them, but also because we do not think they are as consistently good as the Tocos pots. The Tocos pots are the most consistent, high quality pots we have tested. With regards to the sweep changing, that is due to modern day pot manufacturing techniques that are used across the industry.

In my first article I described that I swapped the cable from the guitar and to the amp on my pedal, so I got a curve closer to the old ones. This however had a technical drawback: you lose a lot of treble when the pedal is not at full position (much more than you normally do), so it was not really a solution.

Measurements

Measuring the output in relation to the pedal position
Ernie Ball volume pedal curves - After my modification (red curve) the pedal behaves just like the sought-after version from the early 80ies (yellow)

Without being a technician, you can see huge differences in the diagram. On the horizontal axis we have the pedal position, on the vertical we have volume output. The 1989 Allen Bradly (red) and the Canadian  poti used in the 90ies (blue) have almost identical curves. This is only slightly changed with the taper switch (green).

The yellow curve is the original poti style, and the orange curve is the 1989 poti after my modification (see below). Believe me, I myself am very pleased with my result 🙂 , and don’t forget that potis differ due to tolerances, so even two identical models will not measure 100% identical.

Now the great news

Coming from a family of engineers, I could not sleep (well not really 😉 ) before I found a solution for the problem. I finally managed to modify my two pedals to behave almost 100% identical to the old poti style, and this without any drawbacks, like the need to use (and first to find!) some low-quality poti with a similar curve, or to build in active electronic components that require a battery and introduce noise. The ease of use, look  and reliabilty of the pedal is not decreased in any way! The modification was  very tricky at first (you need inch allen keys that are difficult to get here in Europe,  or you constantly wish for thinner but longer fingers to operate things inside the pedal) and required a lot of experimenting (including making myself a little tool), but finally I got it done. I was really surprised about how close my modification is to the original curve (see diagram).

If you want me to modify your pedal (should work with all Ernie Ball types, at least for the common 6166 and the 6180 Junior pedals), I will happily do so. I thought it is fair to charge you the same fee as you pay for a repair at Ernie Ball – US $ 55 or 42,- € via PayPal (and what I do is more work than what they do, plus for some pedal models they even charge you US $ 75.)  Shipping: You pay shipping to me (Germany), I pay shipping back within Germany, within the EU it is  plus 5,- € . If you are from outside the EU, please ask for details before since customs seem to make handling rather difficult. Also ask for alternatives if you don’t want to use PayPal.

Use the contact form of this blog for first communication. I will reply via email then!

BTW, I will leave in your original poti which means if it is already scratchy, it probably will still be after (although one of mine was cured for some reason after the modification :). I also can open your poti when scratchy to see if I can clean it inside, please inquire for details in such a case.

Update: Check the MK-guitar.com shop for our stock of Ernie Ball pedals that are already modified.