Today the Orange Squeezer compressor by Dan Armstrong is an almost legendardy guitar effect. An essential portion of this fame is probably due to the fact that it is often named as an ingredient for the early Mark Knopfler / Dire Straits sound. Ironically this goes back to my old Dire Straits Guitar Page which was the first site in the web to mention the Orange Squeezer as part of […]
The last poll about what you would like to read here is still running (so vote if you haven’t yet), but it seems to be clear that many readers want to read about licks (or rather want to see something as video I guess). So here a quick reaction (to be honest, I started to work on this video anyway 😉 ) This post is about a typical Mark Knopfler […]
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 […]
Imitating the sound of a freight train whistle seems to be an obligatory part of all blues players’ vocabulary. For this purpose Mark Knopfler often uses a particular chord, a chord that appears on songs like Eastbound Train or Gravy Train (live), but also on the The Bug. The chord in question is often called a 6/#9 chord (sometimes also denoted as 6/10). Remember, the numbers indicate the interval from […]
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 […]
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 […]
What do you think is the most important chord for the average guitar player? Well, presumably it is a rather simple, basic chord that is played often in all kind of tunes. So probably a ‘normal’ major chord, something like C or D. Even a beginner quickly learns that there are many ways to play even something simple as a C chord. The first version you learn is probably the […]
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 […]