The US leg of Mark Knopfler’s 2010 Get Lucky tour is over, and we in Europe are looking forward to the next part. Due to the new recording policy on all MK concerts, there seem to be less videos on youtube than we had the years before, but still we have some 🙂 On the base of mainly these videos I put together a list of the guitars Mark has […]
Mark Knopfler never played that much bottle-neck guitar on his albums or concerts, nevertheless he occasionally did: except Water of Love from the first Dire Straits album of course, songs like The Man’s too strong (from Brothers in Arms), Do America (from Sailing to Philadelphia), Money for Nothing intro (live version 2001 tour), or Right now (All the roadrunning) come to mind. (I guess there are more, but before thinking […]
Mark Knopfler’s “Sultans” Strat (ser.-no. #68354) is from 1961. The second red Fender Strat he played with Dire Straits (ser.no #80470) was from about the same period (apart from the question in how far it was original Fender at all). For this reason I put together a table to give you a survey about the distinctive features that are different on a 1961 Strat compared with earlier or later Strats. […]
Dire Straits’ first hit was Sultans of Swing, recorded in Basing Street studios, February 1978. But did you know that there was a different studio recording before (demo version, Pathway Studios, July 1977), and also a later recording (Pathway Studios, April 1978) that was recorded to be released as a single in some countries? The demo version This version was recorded on July 2, 1977, together with four other song […]
Following on from Ingo’s excellent article on the stolen sunburst schecter used on Tunnel Of Love. I (Dermot O’Reilly also known as strat61 on some forums) have been invited to write a piece on my Schecter come fender strat inspired by that guitar. Inspiration Although I followed Dire Straits from 1978 with Sultans it was only Christmas 1980 when I started to play the guitar myself that I really locked […]
*Note: As there was an issue with this guitar – the neck warp was too big to play properly with 08 strings – the guitar was returned. For this reason, I removed all names – of the builder and the client. XY* – a reader of this blog and singer / guitar player in the band XY*- recently sent me an email about his latest guitar: a clone of the […]
I recently saw a few threads in numerous forums about the guitar sound of So far away on Dire Straits’ fifth album, Brothers in Arms. People speculated that there was a flanger, a delay, a chorus, or other effects involved to create the rather unusual sound of the lead guitar. And unusual it is in fact. This is because it is not really a guitar what you hear – instead […]
I have my National for some years now but never found the time, money, and courage to install a pick-up into this sensitive instrument. But a few weeks ago I decided to order what is said to be the best available pick-up for single cone Nationals: the iP-1X pick-up from Highlander – the same model that Mark Knopfler has in both his beautiful 1937 National and his new National. I […]
Mark Knopfler owns two beautiful vintage Gibson acoustic guitars which he seems to play a lot on his studio albums these days. One is a 1953 Gibson Southerner Jumbo, the other a 1938 Gibson Advanced Jumbo which I would like to feature in this article. Both have a sunburst finish and thus look a bit similar at first glance. Besides the different body shape, the different fingerboard inlays tell you […]
As promised in the comments on one of the last articles, I tried to find all pictures of one of Dire Straits’ first gigs – the one at the summer party for Charlie Gilett’s Honky Tonk Radio Show, on the Clapham Common bandstand, September 10, 1977. Unfortunately there are only 4 pictures it seems, not 5 or 6 as I hoped (the one on the sleeve of the Honky Tonk […]