Misc, MK guitar style and licks

Alternate Sultans of Swing solo take from first album session – unheard before – exclusively on mk-guitar.com

Here you will find an alternate take of the Sultans of Swing first  solo from the recording session for the first album at Basing Street Studios in February 1978. Unfortunately the quality is more than poor, you might guess where it is coming from…

It is not so much different, but it is for sure not the take  that was released. This can maybe heard best between 0:15 and 0:22 where the phrasing and some notes are different, similar to some live versions or to the version from Pathway Studios.

And that’s the neck pick-up, I’d think the FS-1, isn’t it?

 

Guitars, Mark Knopfler gear

Inside the Schecter F500T pick-up – What is a tapped pick-up?

The Schecter-F400 loaded pickguards normally came with Schecter’s F500T pick-ups. The ‘T’ stands for tapped. So, what is meant with this, what is a tapped pick-up?
A normal Strat pick-up consists of six individual magnet pole pieces wrapped by a coil of thin wire. The original Fender design had about 8,000 turns (varying to some extent, the vintage ’54 pick-up was specified to 8,350, while a 1978 Strat pick-up had about 7,600 turns). This will result in a coil of about 6 kOhms. Compared to a humbucker like Gibson’s PAF the Strat sound is rather thin and weak with lots of treble, which is not ideal to get a heavy distortion from most vintage amps. Adding more turns will result in a louder and at the same time fuller sound (more midrange, less harsh treble). This was the reason why pick-ups like the DiMarzio FS-1 or SDS-1 were invented in the early 70ies. They had a coil with almost twice as many turns, which means about 12 – 13 kOhms. Great for distortion, and a great fat and warm sound for clean stuff. However, you cannot recreate the crisp original Strat sound with these.

The solution that combines the best of both worlds is the tapped pick-up. David Schecter was probably not the person who invented these, or used them for the first time, but probably the one who made them popular in the late 70ies. The idea of a tapped pick-up is to make a coil with the standard number of turns first. Next a second coil is added around the first one, wired in series with the first. Consequently a tapped pick-up has three cables: ground, normal coil output, and the output of both coils in series (which is equal to one coil with the double number of turns). Of course you need some switching system to select the normal or double coil, ideally individually for each pick-up. Here the three mini toggle switches of the Schecter Dream Machines came in. Each of them has three positions: up is the first coil for a standard Strat sound, in the middle position the pick-up is off, and in the down position you have the full coil. As you can combine the three pick-ups in any coil position, you will get 27 individual sounds this way.

A tapped pick-up has two coils, an inner (blue) and an outer coil (green). The inner coil gives you the standard Strat sound, adding the outer coil will result in a higher output.
A tapped pick-up has three connectors

For my loaded Schecter-style pickguards, I use handwound pick-ups by Germany’s pick-up specialist Harry Häussel that are based on the F500T design. Check them out in this site’s shop.

Misc, MK guitar style and licks, Recording

Mark Knopfler on Thomas Dolby’s 17 Hills – Auditioning different lead guitar takes

I recently watched a few Youtube videos by Tomas Dolby about recording for his new album. One track – 17 Hills – features Mark Knopfler on lead guitar. There is one video in which Thomas tells about recording the guitar at Mark’s British Grove Studio. Mark recorded various  guitar takes for this song, and Thomas explains how the recording session developped – “and how to give direction to a demigod” (quote from Thomas).

It is quite interesting to hear the different takes in comparision. They reveal Mark’s approach of jamming along the song, and reacting to Thomas’s suggestions. The guitar sound is still very direct with lots of dynamics, still without all the effects they will put in in the final mix. Enjoy!

Guitars, Mark Knopfler gear, Misc, Vintage guitars

MK-Guitar.com presents: Loaded Schecter F400-style pickguard

I am proud to announce a brand new product which will be available exclusively on this site in the very near future.

For a long time those vintage Schecter pickguards, loaded with the sought-after F500T tapped Schecter pick-ups, have been the ultimate tool to convert your guitar into something similar to the legendary Schecter Dream Machines, or as a start point to build a high-end custom Strat. With those three mini switches and the tapped pick-ups you can select from not less than 27 pick-up combinations, ranging from the classic Strat sounds to fat p90-like blues sounds.

The loaded Schecter F400 pickguards came with the Dream Machines, or were available separately to upgrade your Strat in the 70ies and early 80ies. Anyway, they are extremely rare and for this reason almost impossible to get. No wonder that used items have sold for up to 1,500 USD on ebay since then.

Here they are again – exclusively on MK-Guitar.com

I had the idea to build one of these for myself but I soon found out that the price will be astronomical for two reasons: most of those fancy parts like for example the American flat-lever mini switches or the conductive plastic potis are hard to get, and if so only in certain quantities. Also, some jobs like constructing the pickguard in AutoCAD to get a vector file that controls certain high-tech machinery imply an enormous amount of work and time, and would not pay for just one single board. So the idea of a small production run was born.


Highest quality only

The core idea of Schecter was to offer upgrade parts for your guitar, and as an upgrade these need to be of superior quality. Mind that a complete Schecter Dream Machine was never considered as as Strat copy because even back then it cost a multiple of the price for a US Fender Strat. Everything was made with finest parts. The potis for example were not simply some potis, they were US made conductive plastic potis for extended life, fully dust capsuled. When you turn them, they do not feel like a crappy Chinese poti found in many guitars these days. Instead, they have that creamy tight feel you associate with the volume knob of an expensive  HIFI amplifier. We have them again!
Or those mini switches: they are still available today but normally they have a round lever instead of the flat one. I indeed found Asian switches with flat levers that look alright but if you compare them with the real stuff, they simply feel different, they rattle, and – call me a snob – when you switch them, the “click” sound is different than with the US switches. Finally I managed to get hold of US made switches, they cost me three times as much as the Asia stuff but it is worth the price. I even got those  fancy round dress nuts for the switches, essential for the authentic look.

Flat-lever switches with dress nuts

Hand-wound finest custom pick-ups by Harry Häussel

Another problem were the pick-ups. The original Schecter F500T was a tapped pick-up for both the classic Strat sound and a fat, warmer lead sound. The ones you see on ebay are extremely expensive, or often defective. It seems many of them have problems after some decades, something which is also true for 50ies Fender pick-ups. A few companies, e.g. Seymour Duncan, still make pick-ups that are somewhat similar to the F500T. However, similar was not enough for me, so I teamed up with one of Europe’s hottest pick-up winding gurus – Harry Häussel – to come up with something superior. Those of you who know Harry’s outstanding vintage Fender replicas will not be surprised to hear that our pick-ups are made with real love and attention to even smallest details. They have the same kind of magnets, the same winding wire, the same winding method. I even got American gauge cables of the same colours – black, yellow, and purple –  simply because the European cable gauges looked too skinny, or were too fat.

Tapped pick-ups with those big Alnico magnets

What you get

Our loaded pickguards should fit on all Strat-sized guitars (8 holes like vintage Schecter).

* Made of solid brass (alternatively white aluminium), professionally high-tech cut to our specifications in Germany, professionally polished for that magic, shiny look.

* Hand-wound pick-ups for that F500T sound. Magnets, wires, winding etc.,  like vintage Schecter. These are definitely not the cheapest but the best!

* Two US high-quality square potis, conductive plastic, extended life, just like vintage Schecter (in fact by one of the two suppliers that Schecter had, the other one  is out of business)

* Three US-made flat-lever mini toggle switches, with dress nuts, just like vintage Schecter

* Tone capacitor and treble bleeding capacitor with resistor, like vintage Schecter.

Price:  to be announced soon (Update: 419,- €)

Availabilty: coming soon (Update: first pickguards shipping)

See product in our shop:

And here the original, a real vintage Schecter

 

... and another vintage Schecter. Compare to the previous picture and note that Schecter used switches and potis from different manuafacturers.
The backside of the Pensa MK-80 pickguard looks quite different
MK guitar style and licks

Jamming over “Dire Straits – In the Gallery” groove loop

For some weeks I have been playing around with a Boss RC-50 loop station. The RC-50 allows you to record your own playing and play it as a loop. This way you can create multiple sound layers, and then jam to it. A really nice tool that makes a lot of fun.

Here I am live recording a rhythm guitar and a bass over a drum rhythm from the RC-50, similar to the groove of In the Gallery from Dire Straits’ first album. The guitar is a part-o-caster with an old Squier body and neck , the bass is an old Precision Bass.

Everything was monitored over a Music Man RP 112 RP amp, and recorded with the microphone of the video camera. There are no effects except some reverb from the amp.

Mark Knopfler gear, Misc

The Vox Vintage Coil Cord – and why I love spiral guitar cables

When I started playing the guitar in 1979, spiral guitar cables were common. Many players favoured these spiral – or coil(ed) – cables because it is very handy not to have meters of cables lying on the floor between your feet and your effects. The spiral cable shortens automatically to a few feet, while it allows distances up to several meters when stretched out, and they don’t wrap themselves after turning around a few times such as normal cable does. Last not least, I always found they look cool.

The black Vox Vintage Coil cable with silver plug with 24k gold-plated contacts

I am not really sure why they got out of fashion a few years later, so much that for decades  it was almost impossible to get a long high-quality spiral cable. I was surprised to see them back a few years ago, when Vox presented their Vintage Coil Cord. Fender also has one again. In fact the Vox cable looks pretty much exactly as the cable that Mark Knopfler played live when he started Dire Straits, so I tried to get hold of them. Unfortunately it turned out that they were not available in Germany, and shipping them from the US meant high additional costs. I finally got some from the German distributor that were left over after a music fair. I use them live and for recording since then.

What I like about this cable is the look, the feel, and the sound. It is really true that different cables sound different. This is not vodoo thinking but based on a few technical facts about pick-up design. With these cables the sound becomes smoother with some nice bite in the upper mids. I am not sure if this has to do with Vox’s multi-core design forthis cable – different cores for different frequencies – or if it is just the result of the electrical specs. Anyway, it sounds good.

The sound of the cable is especially important when using two of these, before and after a passive effect, like Mark Knopfler apparently did in the late 7oies. With an active effect device, only the cable before the device matters, but with e.g. the Morley volume pedal, both will affect the sound, to be concrete, the capacity of both cables adds and transforms the pick-up’s resonance peak, adding some high mids.

This and the next picture prove that one spiral cable was before and one after the Morley volume pedal.

The cable is very reliable. I guess spiral cables were phased out because they can be damaged when you step on them very hard, thus bending the coiled cable to some radius smaller then allowed, which makes the cable break or the shielding loose. The Vox cable, however, is very strong so that it will not be harmed when stepping on it (something I nevertheless try to avoid). Even after using it for a few years now, none of mine makes noises when moving the cable, or shows any other problems.

I recently got some of these great cables which I can offer at a great price in this site’s online shop. Check them out!

MK guitar style and licks

Money for Nothing on Guitar Hero Warriors of Rock

The new Guitar Hero Warriors of Rock features Dire Straits – Money for Nothing from the Brothers In Arms CD (1985).

We had a lot of fun and many valuable insights with Sultans of Swing from this game some months ago. This one is also a great listen for all of us MK-style guitar players since hearing the guitar(s) alone lets you hear so many details that are lost behind the other instruments in the mix. I especially love that rhythm riff Mark plays only in the verses, but also all those licks in the refrain are great. So buy yourself a game console like Playstation 3, Wii or Xbox, and this great new game.

Here – as an appetizer – some short extracts from the the two riff guitars.


Simply click on the blue progress bar to make the player play a different part of the song.

Note that in the intro and the first verse there is only one guitar that is doubled with some delay. From the first refrain on, we have two separate guitar tracks. As these are panned left and right, you just need to set your monitors so that only one channel is played to hear these alone.


Guitar in general, Guitars

The volume pot – what is the right resistance and how does it affect the sound of a guitar pick-up

In forums I often read questions about different volume pots and the best value they should have. A normal Fender Strat pot has 250 kOhms, but 1MOhms (=1000 k Ohms) is used on Telecasters, while Gibson often uses 500 kOhms. And then there are the no-load pots,  so all in all it seems there is some confusion about what to use best, and what effect a different pot value will have.

To start with, pots of all values will do the same in a guitar: adjusting the volume from 0 % to 100 %. Their value has (almost) nothing to do with the resulting highest possible volume, nor has it to do with the ‘volume curve’ that describes how fast the volume changes from 0 – 100% (the so-called taper, which is described with terms like linear or logarithmic). There is only one thing affected by the pot resistance: the height of the pick-up’s resonance peak. So, what on earth is this?

The resonance peak

A guitar pick-up normally consists of a coil around some magnets. Such a construction does not have a linear sound – which means not all frequencies are transduced at the same volume. Instead, there is normally a certain frequency that appears much louder than all others – this peak is called resonance peak, its frequency is the resonance frequency. Note that frequencies higher than the resonance frequency are hardly transduced at all (they become lower with 12dB per octave), see the following image:

Picture courtesy H. Lemme

The height of this peak and the exact position of that resonance frequency depend on the pick-up’s construction details.Stronger magnets might have a higher resonance peak, while a metal cap of a Gibson humbucker or telecaster neck pick-up dampens the peak. Generally a pick-up with more windings has a lower resonance frequency. It also depends on the guitar cable since a shielded cable – and guitar cables are always shielded – behaves like a capacitor, and a capacitor shifts down the resonance peak. A Fender Stratocaster pick-up for example has its resonance peak at about 7 kHz without guitar cable, but just about 3 or 4 kHz (!) with an average guitar cable – the longer or thinner the cable, the lower the resonance frequency.

If we now put a resistor in parallel to the guitar pick-up – this is called ‘load’ – , it will decrease the height of the resonance peak, in other words it will dampen the peak, see the following graph:

The volume pot load can drastically change the frequency response of the pick-up. Read below why this however often hardly matters within your setup. (Picture courtesy H. Lemme)

A volume pot divides the signal voltage produced by the pick-up in accordance to the pot position. But no matter which the position the pot is at, the load is always the full resistance of the pot , and thus this value will dampen the resonance peak.

What does it mean to my guitar sound?

Damping the resonance peak means that a part of the treble range is decreased, so we have less treble. Note however that the resonance peak itself is not a ‘natural’ thing but an artefact caused by the pick-up. Seen from this perspective a dampened resonance peak will sound more linear, thus maybe more natural. In fact the resonance peak causes a certain colour to the sound – typically a presence boost that can help to promote clarity, but also can lead to a harsh sound (ever had aching ears from a clean Fender pick-up at high volumes?).  So dampening the resonance peak can sound bad or good – depending on the situation and of what you are looking for.

Which value for which sound?

Especially for clear sounds, I like the sweeter sound of the dampened resonance peak better than that harsh, trebly sound. For this reason I prefer a smaller value of the volume pot. Years ago I tried out 1 MOhms pots in a Strat which I found terrible. However, this value might be okay for a Telecaster since the metal cap of the Tele neck pick-up dampens the height of the resonace peak anyway, and dampening it even more might overdo it. On the other hand those typical squealing, microphonic noises of a (sometimes poorly waxed) Telecaster pick-up usually get worse with a high pot value, in fact that whistling feedback will typically start directly at the resonance frequency of the pick-up, so a smaller value might mean less pick-up feedback (which must not be confused with the wanted ‘string feedback’).

The ‘no-load’ pots work like an off-switch at the last part of the rotary. They are intended to be used as tone pot and cannot really be used as volume pot, so let’s forget about these here.

The low input impedance of the Morley volume pedal will make the guitar sound sweeter at all volume positions because it adds an additional load to the guitar pick-up. The load of your effect devices can make the difference between a 250 or 500 kOhms volume pot almost non-existent.

Now forget about all this again because…

The volume pot is not the only part which puts a load (= a resistance parallel to the pick-up) on the pick-up. Also the input resistance of the first device that follows the guitar in the signal chain adds to the total load (and if the first device is a passive device, the input resistance of the next devices will also put more load on the pick-up). To be concrete, both loads will not simply add (in the sense of 250kOhms + 500 kOhms = 750 kOhms) but will follow the formula for resistors in parallel: R-total = (R1 * R2) / (R1+ R2) , with R1 and R2 being the two resistor values. Thus e.g. a 250 kOhms and 500 kOhms will result in a total load of 166.7 kOhms (note that the total is less than the individual values of the two resistors used).

This is the reason why in a real-life set-up the value of the volume pot might become irrelevant. Let’s say the first effect device has an input resistance of 100 KOhms (they normally have a few hundreds, but there are some like a Morley volume pedal, or an Orange Squeezer compressor that are even below 100 kOhms) . Exchanging a 250 kOhms volume pot for a 1 MOhms pot (= 1000 kOhms) will result in a mere change from 71 to 91 kOhms of the total load, and it is this total value that matters.

So, only if you go directly into a high impedance input (high load), e.g. a tube amp typically has 1 MOhms, you will get a major change of the resonance peak height.

Years ago a friend of mine had a ’71 Stratocaster which sounded absolutely great. Besides being very resonant, it sounded sweeter, less harsh, when directly A/B compared to other Strats, going directly into the amp. And we had an original ’62 Strat which for some reason sounded harsher than normal. In fact the volume pots had been replaced on both of them, the ’71 had a mere 100 KOhms, the ’62 had something I measured to be about 800 KOhms.

Conclusion

* The value of the volume pot affects the tone because it has an effect on the height of the resonance peak.

* A smaller value might sound sweeter and not neccessarily duller than a higher value, which might sound harsh in some situations.

* It is the total load that matters – not alone the value of the volume pot. This is why exchanging the pot can have almost no effect, at least it is nothing I use to worry about.

Guitars, Mark Knopfler gear, Vintage guitars

The Schecter Story: Schecter Guitar Research – Dream Machines – The Van Nuys Era

In the 80ies, Mark Knopfler was probably the most famous user of Schecter guitars. He bought several Schecters in 1980 at Rudy’s Music Stop in New York, mainly because he was looking for a guitar that was easier to play and better suited for the high demands on the road than the vintage Fenders he played before. Also his former girl-friend played a Schecter which he said was much better than his Fender guitars.

So what was the story behind the Schecter company?

Schecter Guitar Research started around 1976 in Van Nuys, California, when David Schecter opened his repair and custom guitar shop. He soon started to produce his own quality guitar parts which were intended to replace some stock parts on common guitars. Especially the Fender Stratocaster and Telecaster were the ideal guitar to be hot-rodded, since all their parts could be replaced much easier than with the laminated constructions that Gibson used, and the quality of Fender guitars was possibly at the lowest in the Fender history.

We got it all - a Schecter ad from 1979

Because of their background as supplier of upgrade parts, Schecter soon was mainly known for

(a) exotic woods

Unlike Fender who build their guitars from rather common woods (ash, elder, maple,..), Schecter specialized in beautiful exotic woods, like Shedua, Koa, Cocobola, Pau Fero, Mahogany, Rosewood, Purple Heart, or figured maple (necks), or Red Oak, Paduak, Zebrawood, Teak, Koa, Anjico, Imbuya, and many more (bodies). As you see, trading with protected tropical woods was not an issue in the 70ies yet.

All necks were one-piece which means they did not have a separate fingerboard (as Mark Knopfler’s red Tele had, but this was a very late model). They had 21 frets, 22 frets were a later trend started by heavy metal guitarists in the 80ies. If you upgraded your guitar with such a beautiful exotic wood, you don’t want to hide it behind a solid finish, consequently the typical Schecter guitar was bare wood, or an oil finish, although laquer was offered for additional charge.

exotic woods for necks, from left to right: Pau Fero, Shedua, Cocobola

(b) brass hardware

In the seventies it was common believe that a guitar should ideally be rather heavy in order to have a lot of sustain. Surprisingly today many players prefer light-weighted woods, and talk rather about tone than sustain. One way to improve sustain – which means how long a note will last – was to replace the steel hardware with brass hardware. For this reason not only Schecter but also Mighty Mite – the second big parts supplier – and Fender themselves offered brass hardware as an upgrade in the late 70ies. Fender even released an upgraded Stratocaster with the model name The Strat in 1980 that came with a brass bridge, a brass nut, and matching brass knobs. By the way, Schecter also supplied the big manufactureres like Fender and Gibson with parts, so possibly some of the brass master series parts by Fender were actually produced by Schecter.

(c) beefed-up pick-ups

In the 70ies, there were hardly any high-gain amps, again something that was more a child of the 80ies. Nevertheless, the first amp manufacturers or amp repair specialists were successful with offering high-gain mods, e.g. the first Mesa Boogies based on a Fender circuit that was modified to have more distortion. Another way to increase the distortion abilities was to replace the stock Fender pick-ups with overwound pick-ups. This was what DiMarzio started in the early 70ies. Instead of the common 7,000-8,000 windings you simply put much more on a Stratocaster pick-up. This way the pick-up became louder and had less treble but more mids. The drawback: you would loose the original Strat sound which was great for clear sounds. Here David Schecter came in with the invention of the F500T pick-up, the first successful tapped pick-up. Tapped means that the F500T was a beefed-up pick-up with almost twice as much windings than a standard Fender pick-up, but it had a tap after the normal number of windings, so you could “switch off” the second half of the coil so to say. For this reason the pick-up did not have the normal two cables but three (ground, half coil, full coil). The pick-up coils were switched by three mini switches with three positions each (tapped, off, full), instead of the Fender 5-way switch.

The assembled Schecter F400T pickguard often sells for over 1,000 € on ebay

The Dream Machines

After a few years Schecter was very successful and their product range had grown so that they actually had each part of a Fender guitar in their catalogue. So it was nothing but the next logical step to offer complete guitars. These were put together by one of their qualified retailers (e.g. Rudy’s Music Stop was one of them), and marketed as Dream Machines. The five Strats (red, red, blue, sunburst, plus replacement sunburst) and the black Tele were Dream Machines. The red Tele as well, but he got this about 3 or 4 years later.

Schecter Dream Machine

Some more detail difference between a dream machine and a stock Fender (except the points mentioned above): two strap pins at the bottom (Schecters were often heavy, and this way the player could change the balance by using one or the other pin), metal pickguards, only two knobs (one volume, one tone), treble-bleed capacitor to reduce treble loss when reducing volume (similar to the telecaster circuit), two long-life plastic conductor potis, and sometimes no fingeboard dots.

The end of the era

About 1983 Schecter was sold to – officially – a group of Texan investors, who moved over the business to Dallas, Texas. They still offered parts and complete guitars, but the quality was apparently different to what it was before. Here is an inofficial insider story I read in a forum:

One of the laeding sales guys at Schecter had origins in the ‘meat-packing industry’ – some weird people who made obscure deals. Before being accused of spreading false rumour, I prefer to quote the following:

“They basically write contracts to people that wanna save money on their meat purchases, by buying 1/2 a cow, and getting the cut and packed into convenient sizes. Don’t have a freezer big enough? They’ll sell you a freezer too, just sign the contract. Then they sell the contract to a finance company. If they get too many complaints, they simply move their operation to another county or another state.

Apparently, Shel didn’t use their investment money very wisely, and the meat-packers were getting pissed. I don’t know whether it was before, during, or after this problem, but at some point, Dave [Schecter] decided he had enough and split (or was forced out; that part is still unclear to me), leaving the company in Shel’s hands. At some point the meat-packing investors decided that they had had enough, too.

One night. around midnight, they showed up in meat delivery trucks at Schecter after the place had closed, broke the locks, went in, and grabbed everything they could grab: guitars, pickups, winding machines, office furniture, everything that wasn’t bolted down (and a few things that were), loaded their trucks and split – for Dallas, Texas.”

So according to this source, the whole Schecter Californian shop was robbed out and the inventory sold from Dallas. This would explain why the Dallas era guitars still have many identical parts while other parts seem to be from other sources, and the overall quality was lacking.

Later the name Schecter was sold to a Japanese investor who moved back the company to California. The new Schecter company made many original models,aiming mainly at the heavy metal scene. It seems besides the name this company has nothing to do with the original Schecter company.