I added a backing track for the long live version of Sultans of Swing to our online shop. Check it out and listen to sound samples here. It is 12:05 min long and includes the piano solo but is without saxophone. I hope to make a youtube cover over this backing track within the near future.
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 all sides, and some in contrast to my battered-looking 1936 Style-O.
The National Style-0 from the early 30ies have a different, longer body shape. The body joins the neck at the 12th fret, while from the mid-30ies on the joint was near the 14th fret. For this reason the body was slightly larger, and thus has more volume. In fact Thomas’ National sounds deeper and has more low end than the 1936, however, you never know in how far the sound difference is caused by other aspects. One is that on his 1932 the resonator rests on a ring of thin rubber foil. This was done by a luthier some time ago to remedy buzz from the resonator.
Both guitars differ a lot in detail, e.g. different resonator covers, different logos, different headstocks, etc. The pictures might tell more than many words here.
The 1932 has a flat fingerboard while the 1936 is curved. Both have the original frets, but in case of the 1932 these are heavily worn, especially in the middle of the frets so that the frets appear almost concave which makes it unpleasant to fret certain chords. The 1936 has an extremely fat neck, the Shubb capo can be used only up to to the 5th fret and does not fit anymore beyond this point.
Both have the Hawaiian scene with a volcano, a canoe and the palm trees on the back, but both are different. National used many different variations over the years.
In this blog post you will find another guitar tutorial video, this time not about a certain aspect of Mark Knopfler’s guitar playing but one that explains how to play a particular song again, similar to the ones I did about Down to the Waterline some time ago. As Down to the Waterline is the first song of Dire Straits’ first album, I thought why not go on with the second song, Water of Love (there might be another on on Setting me up – the third song – in the future). Again my intention is not simply to demonstrate you which notes to play but also to explain what might be interesting or special about particular licks, or how things go together etc. And my intention is neither to show a particular version with 100% accuracy but a mix of licks he played on different versions, or the scales he used to build his licks.
I do not refer to the studio version but to live versions from 1978-79.The studio version was played on two different guitars, a National Tricone and a standard acoustic guitar, and Mark did not play his usual mix of rhythm and lead as he did on stage. Live Mark played the black Fender Telecaster Thinline (the f holes were closed by his friend Steve Phillips), which was tuned to open A)low to high: a – e- a- e- c# -e), capo’ed at the 5th fret to open D (while the National was probably open G, capo’ed at the 7th fret).
The chords of Water of Love are like this:
Solo
D – D – C – C – G – G – Am – C
D – D – C – C – G – G – D – D
Verse
D- D – D – D – D – D – D – D
Am – Am – Am – Am – D – D – D – D
Chorus
Am – Am – G – D
Am – Am – G – D
So, here is the video. You will find links to two different live version from 1978 in the video itself (at 1:17)
The recent Mark Knopfler & Bob Dylan tour ended with the show at the Hammersmith Apollo in London on November 21, 2011. The last encore played that day was a duet of both masters – the song ‘Forever Young’ (from Dylan’s 1974 album Planet Waves). A new guitar appeared on this song – a Mark Knopfler Signature Strat with lipstick pickups.
The lipstick pickup was the pickup on vintage Danelectro and many Silvertone guitars – like the one that Mark plays on Donegan’s Gone. It is called lipstick pickup because those silver tubes that house the coil look like a lipstick – in fact they originally were surplus lipstick tubes! Inside, a lipstick pickup does not have individual pole pieces like a standard Stratocaster pickup but one alnico 6 bar magnet instead, and the coil is simply wound around the bar (see picture).
The sound of the lipstick pickup is rather different than the stock Stratocaster pickup. Generally pickups without single pole pieces have a less dominant resonance peak (more information on the resonance peak in this blog post) and thus softer treble end, plus the metall lipstick tube dampens that resonance peak even more (like the cover on a Telecaster neck pickup does). The sound can for this reason be described with warm, jangly, silky, transparent, but less harsh than a normal Strat, less bite, less high end.
In Danelectro and Slivertone guitars both lipstick pickups were normally wired in series instead of the parallel. This also causes a drastic sound change.
Mark Knopfler was probably enthused for these pickups by Mike Henderson, who was Mark’s third guitarist on the 2001 tour. Mike favours Danelectro guitars for slide. The original lipstick pickup is too long to fit into a Stratocaster pickguard but many manufacturers offer replacements that fit into the Stratocaster. In fact the pickups in Mark’s guitar are Seymour Duncans SLS-1. As his guitar does not look modified otherwise (normal 5-way switch) the pickups are probably wired in parallel, like in a standard Stratocaster. Mark played the 2&3 position (neck and middle) on Forever Young.
Here finally is a video showing Mark and Bob Dylan playing Forever Young:
Update: Simon was so nice to let us know through his comment that there is video on the official Seymour Duncan channel that shows Seymour Duncan himself with the loaded pickguard he made for Mark Knopfler. One detail he mentions is that it is a RWRP pickup (reverse wound/reverse polarity) in the middle position to cancel hum.
In the videos below we were comparing two Mark Knopfler Signature Strats to a 1964 Fender Stratocaster, also in red (fiesta). Talking about red, note that one of the signature Strats is in the ‘wrong’ colour the very first ones came with, while the other one is the normal hot rod red. It is always interesting to hear how different three Strats will sound, even Strats of exactly the same model with the same specs. We feel the hot rod red Strat sounds warmer and fatter while the darker one has a nice transparent sound, a bit crisper but also warm. The ’64 Strat does not have an ash body like the signatures, but one of alder (like Mark Knopfler’s 1961 Strat), and the fingerboard is not the slab board (that was produced between 1959 and 1962) but the thinner veneer board. This particular guitar has a bell-like transparent sound with a typical slygthly nasal midrange. All in all, three great guitars which all sound different but all great.
All guitars had 10er strings and were played over a Music Man amp, no effects.
Here is a poll in which you can let others know which one you personally like best.
Loading ...I recently had three different 4 x 12″ cabinets here to play around with. They all were different, and they all had different speakers. In the video below I am playing various licks and chords over the three cabinets, it might be helpful to find out for yourself what you like most. But first, the candidates are:
On the left you can see a birch cabinet made by House of Speakers, which we got on ebay for just 60 € (without speakers of course). It is equipped now with four Electro Voice EV 12L, the same that Mark Knopfler has in his two red Marshall cabinets. The EV 12L is not available anymore, but you normally can easily get one on ebay. It really is a workhorse that was found not only in countless guitar amps but also in PAs or stage monitors. Each of these speakers can handle 200 watts (!), the only drawback: it is very heavy. A cabinet with four of these is like a bank safe!
These are in a Fame cabinet. They are very common because they are not too expensive, loud, and can handle enough power (60 or 70 watts). They are probably one of the most frequently used guitar speakers these days, although they have not that much to do with any vintage Celestion speakers (and do not even have 30 watts as the name suggests).
These are the current version of the legendary 25 watts Celestion speaker, as used in most cabinets from the late 60ies or early 70ies. Mark Knopfler uses these, too, he got some nice vintage Marshall cabinets in his studio. Brothers in Arms was a song recorded over these speakers for example.
I must say I like all of these. They all are different and each has some particular advantages over the others. The Vintage 30 always sounds transparent because of his strong high end, and it is also rather loud which is nice to save power (just 3 dB more volume of a speaker would require two times the power of the amp!). Having much treble always sounds nice in a shoot-out but I think you need to be careful a bit because the treble can be too much in some situations.That Fame cabinet was returned by the way because it was not – as advertised – made of plywood (like the Marshall cabs) but of particle board. Nevertheless it is really good value for the money (a bit more than 400 € with speakers).
The Greenbacks have a very sweet sound, they never sound harsh, even if you dial up treble on the amp. On the other hand, they can appear slightly muddy compared to speakers like the Vintage 30. They also have a very deep and warm bass, and creamy mids.
The EV 12L finally seems to be a good allround speaker to me, the best of the different worlds. It has clear treble end, enough mids, and not too strong in the bass. It might not win every shoot-out with the world’s sweetest sound, but it still makes a good figure in most situations. It is loud and can handle more power than any other speaker. Maybe Mark decided for these as the workhorses in his stage cabinets for the same reasons. If only they were not that heavy…
Tell us in this poll:
Loading ...With this blog post I want to introduce my latest product – the iSound-ST. The what you might ask? The iSound-ST is a rotary switch that is thought to replace one of the controls of your Strat, normally one of the tone controls (I recommend to make the other tone control a master tone control). It mainly changes the Strat’s behaviour when you put your 5-way switch into the 1&2-psotion (bridge & middle pickups), enabling new in-between sounds, plus some more.
I came up with the idea some years ago. In a way it has to do with the mysterious black volume knob on Mark Knopfler’s Dire Straits Strats. From various pictures I knew that he did not have the original poti in his Strat (he had one with a solid shaft instead of a split-shaft) so there was a need for a new knob since the original would not fit anymore. The other thing I always felt was that especially his 1 & 2 sound was somewhat different from a normal Strat. This might be nonsense but I know of many others who feel the same. So I said to myself “What if the black knob (and the replaced poti) is not just a different knob but a hint to some modification of the guitar circuit?” In the seventies when he go his Strat such modifications were really common.
I took one of my Strats and led out all pick-up wires to outside of the guitar. This way I could easily experiment with all kinds of circuit modification, like different pickup combinations and more. As it seems Knopfler’s sound at the positions 3 and 2 (neck alone, middle alone) was “normal”, I was searching especially for modifications that affect the sound in the 1 & 2 position. In fact I found many interesting and good new sounds, and some of these seemed to be closer to what I was after than the normal Strat sound. Others gave me totally new sounds that also seemed very handy to me, e.g. the option to get sounds as fat as a humbucker pickup from a Strat, and all these were passive sounds, no active mid-boost, no battery was required.
Next task was a way to get these sounds without having to rewire cables outside of the guitar. One thing was a must for me: the look of the guitar should not be changed, and I wanted to keep all the original Strat sounds as well. I found that it was possible to achieve this, the answer was … the iSound-ST.
The iSound-ST is a rotary switch with 4 positions, in each of these the 1&2-psoition sound of your Strat will be different (in fact it will be warmer or fatter the more you turn it anti-clockwise). At some positions it also changes some other sounds of the Strat (e.g. when using the middle or bridge position of the 5-way), but at one position of the iSound-ST – the ’10’ position, all turned up – your Strat will still behave as it did before, so you’ll lose nothing, just win new sounds.
After some time of using it I forgot to wonder if Mark Knopfler might had something similar in his Strat or not because I liked it so much. In fact you always heard it on most of my youtube videos, I think I really never used the ‘normal’ 1&2 position sound. So the ‘i’ in iSound might stand for your individual sound, or for Ingo’s sound. And I have it in all of my Strats (except those with the Schecter-style pickguards since these allowed many pickup combinations anyway).
Today his red ’61 Fender Strat has the normal white volume knob again, and his other red Fender Strat (the one with the maple fingerboard) was given away for some charity some decades ago, so there is no option to find out details of his guitars then anymore. In a Guitar Player interview he said that both of his Strats were stock (except the DiMarzio pickup in one of these). On the other hand, he got it 2nd-hand about 1977, it it imaginable that he himself was not even aware of a circuit mod (I think I heard something similar about Chris Rea’s red Strat who also found out years later that his red Strat had been modified all the time). Or he simply did not want to tell about it, remember, in the late 70ies he was new on the scene and his unique guitar sound was really one of key elements of their success then. Would you have told the world about a sound secret if there was really one?
Some years later he said in another interview: “I liked the 3-way switch better than the 5-position; it had a better sound. But I kept knocking it out. I have a 5-position switch on the Strat now. The roadies are always pulling bits out and sticking things in.” This indicates that he maybe was not always aware of what was in his guitar. One thing is sure: a 5-way switch cannot sound different from the 3-way, it is exactly the same switch with just an added notch to make it rest more stable at the in-between position! Maybe the roadies also changed something else here except replacing the switch.
Another detail: he had the black volume knob, and two normal white knobs. Have you ever noticed that these two did not say ‘Tone’ as they normally do, but the middle one says ‘Volume’?
And finally, he got a solid-shaft poti (or even switch?) in both of his red Strats at that time.
It seems we will never know all details behind those early Dire Straits sounds. I for myself stopped worrying about possibly modification of his guitar since I love the iSound-ST in my Strats. This is what matters for me. I get warmer sounds and can my Strat even make sound fat – very fat. I played Money for Nothing and Brothers in Arms with cover bands on my Strat, and I missed nothing.All in all, the iSound-ST gives you six new sounds, in addition to the normal five sounds of a Strat, so you will get 11 sounds from a Strat.
In some of my Strats I also added a second mod that is described in the manual of the iSound-ST: I use another of the Strat’s controls as a blender poti that blends between the normal Strat sound and the fat Strat sounds. This is really what does it for me: normal Strat sound which I can beef up to any agree whenever I need more warmth. (I took the volume poti for this since I use a volume pedal anyway, and it is still possible to mute the guitar with the blender poti and the 5-way at a certain position).
You need to replace one (or even two if you want, see above) poti which requires soldering of course. In fact you will have to unsolder various cables and connect them differently with the iSound-ST. It comes with a detailled step-by-step instruaction, including different pictures of the curcuit, so it is not too complicated. You don’t have to drill or change anything else as long as your guitar has Standard Strat measurements ( I cannot guarantee for any Strat like Japanese copies from the 70ies that often had different internal routings of course).
Note that my current version of the iSound-ST features a normal split-shaft so that you can use your existing knob, no change to the look of your Strat.
Check out the iSound-ST in our shop
Sound clips will follow, as said, most of my old youtube videos feature it anyway, however, there are none demonstrating the real fat sounds. Watch out for things to come. Feel free to use the comment function of this post to ask for more details.
Here are a few comments from user reviews:
Dermot aka Strat61:
“If you have a few strats put this on all of them starting with your favourite one – you can’t lose.”
“The iSound-ST will give you additional extremely useful range sounds and tones regardless from Tele tones through to a beefier out phase to even a Les Paul type tone”
“Well on a decent stock strat and a good tube amp you may already be getting good out of phase DS tones, but this switch will provide additional clarity and boost to those clean out of phase tones from normal setting (thin) to stronger (thick) – now that has to be good as the normal strat out of phase tone can be sometimes too weak especially in a live setup.”
read the full review
TheWizzard:
“The new combinations are great for those old Dire Straits songs, as your guitar will sound much fatter and warmer now. But it is also very useful for other music styles too.
For me the iSound ST is one of the best sound-tools I have ever bought because it’s much easier now to get excellent tones out of your guitar and that just by turning a rotary switch.”
read the full review
After the last video in which I already compared the VFS-1 pickup to a 1955 Fender Strat pickup and to the DiMarzio FS-1, here is a first demo of the complete Schecter-style pickguard with the VFS-1 pickups. I was jamming in the Mark Knopfler style over a self-produced 2 chords backing groove on my metallic pink Strat, which is mainly a 1983 Japanese vintage Squier but with a new bird’s eye maple neck. You are hearing the combination of neck & middle pickups, the switches are in the up position (tapped coil). More demos of others of the 26 possible sound combinations will follow.
I recently introduced the new VFS-1 pickup as an alternative to the F500T-style (Schecter-style) pickups in our loaded pickguards, and I already started to work on some video demos of the complete VFS-1 pickup assembly , the first of these should come within the next days. What I can present today is a side-by-side comparison of the new VFS-1 pickup against the two pickups that inspired us to design this model: the DiMarzio FS-1 (which Mark Knopfler had in the neck position of his red Fender Stratocaster when he started Dire Straits), and a ‘real’ Fender vintage Strat pickup – remember, the VFS-1 is a tapped pickup which gives you two different sounds, so we need to compare it to both.
To get the true picture, I first recorded a few chords and licks with one of my Strats, one which features a DiMarzio FS-1 (a rather old model from the early 80ies, vintage itself) in the neck position and a 1955 (!!) Strat pickup (no rewound, all original) in the middle position. The recording was done directly into a PCM recorder at 24 bits (using a good buffer of course to catch the full sound of the pickups), no effects, no amp, just as direct as possible.
Then I opened the guitar (after I had measured the exact distance between the pole pieces and the strings), put out these two pickups, and installed two VFS-1. The one in the neck position runs on the full coil (DiMarzio sound), the one in the middle position on the tapped coil (vintage sound). I adjusted them to exactly the same distance between strings and magnets, then put the strings (the same!) on again, and recorded the same chords and licks with this setup.
As it is almost impossible to play the same licks at exactly identical volume and with 100% the same ‘touch’, I often played two or three versions of each licks , sometimes with different attack (soft, medium, loud).
The following video lets you hear the results for yourself. I replaced the audio track from the camera with the high-quality version from the PCM recorder. Remember, the guitar was recorded directly, no amp or effects, not even EQ, no nothing. Instead of showing one complete recording first and then the other, I edited the files to have corresponding licks directly behind each other. (I will try to offer a download possibility of the uncompressed WAV file soon in case someone feels that youtube’s conversion algorithms might have deteriorated the sound quality of the video).
I myself must say that I am fascinated how close we managed to get to the sound we wanted. Harry Häussel’s pickups generally have highest reputation – at least here in Germany and already among ‘people who know’ all over the world – but given the fact that we had to deal with two totally different sounds, and thus two totally different pickup designs, I think the result is astonishing. I really felt to check twice I had not confused any files and used audio from the same pickups, but – I give you my word – it is true, nothing has been done wrong, faked, or changed.
Besides from being used optionally in the loaded Schecter-style pickguards, the VFS-1 is ideal for all Dire Straits fans to put it into the neck position of any Strat to get the fat DiMarzio sound. I have the DiMarzio FS-1 in some of my Strats but I often miss the vintage neck-position sound, with the FS-1 you have it all and lose nothing. I used the 2 & 3 position (neck & middle) with the DiMarzio and a vintage pickup on my attempt to recreate that Sultans of Swing sound for the Puresolo competition since it sounds noticeably different from the in-between position with two identical pickups, more open, less nasal.
If youI don’t like to change the look of a guitar with additional switches (like me), you can replace one tone poti with a push/pull poti (also available in our shop) to switch between the coil taps. It is no problem to wire the switch of the push/pull in such a way that you get the sound you mainly use at the pushed-in position, and then pull it when you need the alternate sound.
Check out the VFS-1 in our shop
(Note: Due to high demand I have only a limited stock of the VFS-1 at the moment, new ones are expected soon. It might take a few days for delivery for this reason.)
Our loaded metal pickguards are now available with a new pick-up model: the VFS-1. V stands for vintage, F for fat, (and S for Strat).
Unlike our Schecter-style pick-up (which is very close to a Schecter F500T), the new pick-up has the “normal” sized magnet pole pieces, like a vintage Strat pick-up, and can be used with a plastic cap (the F500Ts do not allow to put a cap on them). So it looks and sounds similar to the Seymour Duncan SSL1s or APS-1 that Mark Knopfler played in his red Schecter dream machine Strat. But that’s not all, the VFS-1 has also a second outer coil to create fatter sounds, similar to the DiMarzio FS-1 that Mark Knopfler played in his red Fender of early Dire Straits days.
In other words, the new tapped pick-up allows two sounds that can be toggled with the up/off/down mini switches of our pickguards. You will have the same 27 sound combinations from the three mini switches as with the F500T pick-ups. In the up-position of the mini switch the sound will be much closer to the vintage Strat sound than the thinner but bassier sound of the F500T.
The new pick-up is also ideal for all who would like to have a DiMarzio FS-1 in the neck position of their Strat for those Single-Handed-Sailor sounds but do not want to lose the normal Strat sound. You can e.g. switch the outer coil on or off with a push-pull poti (available here) so that the overall look of the original Strat is not changed.
The price of this pick-up is the same as of our F500T-style pickups, and the loaded pickguard also costs the same as with the old type (which of course will also remain available). Sound demo clips coming soon. [edit: here is one which A/B compares the VFS-1 to both a 1955 Strat pickup and to a DiMarzio FS-1, more to come]
See the VFS-1 in our shop.