Last month I made a video of a mahogani body Strat. Mahogani is a standard wood for Gibsons but not very popular for Stratocasters. Nevertheless, Mark Knopfler’s metallic red Schecter Strat is said to feature a mahogani body, and possibly his red ‘Walk of Life’ Schecter Telecaster as well.

I also built a Telecaster with a mahogani body some time ago – unlike the Strat this Tele was not built entirely by me but was assembled from existing parts, besides the mahogani body (manufacturer unknown) it has an original Schecter neck from the 80ies, plus my ‘Walk of Life’ brass bridge and pickups, and a brass pickguard.

The track I use to jam to in this video is called ‘Bleeker Street Blues’ by Chris Haugen. It is available in the Youtube audio library of ‘free’ music to be used in Youtube videos.

The song is in the key of C sharp, and with the F sharp chord there are only two chords. I have a capo at the 4th fret. I am playing some Knopfler-style chord stuff, some licks and short solo phrases.

Other Gear

Just like on my other latest videos, I used the amps and effects of my Soundcraft UI24R digital mixing desk. The amp emulation is the ‘Blackface Fender Twin Reverb’ with the matching 2×12 speakers emulation. Effects are EQ, reverb, delay and some compression. Fender black or silver face amps have a dip in the 500 Hz range. I reduced this frequency range for this reason which makes it sound much more like a Fender for my ears. The setting is rather trebly but I rolled down the tone pot on the guitar for a warmer sound. In many situations I like this better than the tone pot fully up with less treble from the amp.

I switched to the middle position of the 3-way switch, so bridge and neck pickups. Both are in the tapped position (push/pull pots are pulled, the pickups have an alternative fatter sound when you push in the pots, see more on tapped pickups here). The volume pot is set to about 80-90%.

There is a slight distortion. Here I used an analog device, a Hotcake distortion pedal. See the pictures for the settings of the amp, EQ and on the Hotcake.