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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
I recently got an old Dutch magazine called JOEPIE from February 1979 with a two-page story about Dire Straits. It features two pictures that show the band on stage at the Hope & Anchor pub. Dire Straits played there several times in late 1977: on September 10 (in the evening after they played the Clapham Common gig in the afternoon of that same day), on November 4, 11, and 18, […]
The loaded Strat pickguards in the vintage Schecter style have been available in brass and white aluminium for a while now, but from now on they are also available in black aluminium. You can chose between two versions: with the VFS-1 or the F500T-style pickups. As both are tapped pickups (two different sounds for each pickup), you will get 26 different pickup combinations and thus 26 different sounds. The black […]
This week I visited the Frankfurt Music Fair, the world’s leading trade fair for the world of music. On one floor it featured a special vintage guitar exhibition where you could see lots of wonderful guitars, even most valuable guitars like Fenders and Gibsons from the fifties. I took many pictures of all kind of guitars, but with this blog post I would like to feature those which are similar […]
The first (today: nine) pages with Mark Knopfler guitars are online. I started with some Strats (mainly the most important ones) and also finished the ones about his 1958 and 1959 Les Pauls. I also included the option to upload your own pictures for each guitar at the bottom of the pages. If many will do, we might soon have a nice picture gallery for each guitar. After approval (to […]
While working on the new gear database – especially on the pages about the different MK Signature Strats – I felt it difficult to tell from a picture which of his different signature Strats it is (Mark used alone three of these on the 2008 tour, and generally seems to use even more here and there). So I had to dig a bit deeper into the numerous pictures and viceo […]
Those beautiful 1958/59 Les Paul Standards are probably the holy grail not only for Mark Knopfler fans – Mark owns a 1958 and a 1959 and plays them on all his tours – but for all guitar players. Unfortunately the prices for these are in the region you’d normally pay for a house, so most of us will hardly ever get the chance to touch one of these. They came […]
What can be nicer than one of those wonderful old National resophonic guitars like the Style-0? The answer is, of course, two of these! My friend Thomas brought his 1932 Style-O along for a photo session. And what a wonderful guitar this is – shiny and sparkling like one of the new reissues but real vintage, almost 80 years old. The pictures from the photo session show the guitar from […]