Guitars, Mark Knopfler gear, Vintage guitars

Features and specs of a ’61 Vintage Stratocaster

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.

1961 Stratbeforelater
Body woodalder (ash for models in blonde)light ash (swamp ash) until 1956heavy ash in the 70ies
Fingerboardslab board made of Brazilian rosewoodone-piece maple nack until 1959curved rosewood venue from mid 1962 on, optional maple board in the late 60ies, one-piece maply neck available in the 70ies again
Pick-upsstaggered pole-pieces, formvar wire insulation, magnetic northpole on topmagnetic southpole on top in the early 50iesenamel wire insulation from about mid 1964 on, flush polepieces from 1974 on
Pickguardthree layers (white/black/white) pickguard of celluloid, fixed with 11 screws, screw #3 between middle and neck pick-upone layer plastic pickguard (or bakelite before 1957) until 1959, fixed with 8 screws (a few models with three layers and 8 screws in 1959)screw #3 moved to middle pick-up in 1963, three layers plastic pickguard from 1965 on
Bridge6 individual bridge saddles made of bent steel, separate steel tremolo block,sameno separated tremolo block from 19xx on, diecasted bridge saddles,
Laquerthin nitro laquer, standard was three tone sunburst (yellow/red/black), many custom colours availablethin nitro laquer, standard was two tone sunburst (yellow/black) until 1958, only a few (and rare) custom colours availableglossy polyesther finish from 1968 on
Tunersmade by Kluson, stamped with one line with “Kluson deluxe”samestamped with two lines with “Kluson deluxe” from 1964 on, made by Schaller from 1968 on
Pick-up switch3-way3-way5-way from 1977 on
Body contoursdeeply contoured
- individual differences due to hand work		deeply contoured
- individual differences due to hand work		becoming less contoured from the mid 60ies on
Stratocaster decalgold “spaghetti logo” with two patent numbersgold “spaghetti logo”,
no patent numbers until 1960,		In late 1964 Fender changed to the fatter gold transitional logo,black logo from 1968 on
three patent number 1963-1964, later 4 numbers
Peghead sizesmallsmallbig head from 1966 on
String holdersone butterfly string holderone round holder until 1956two string holders from 1974 on
Number plate / neck fixation4 screw number plate with stamped serial numbersame (1954 models sometimes with serial number on tremolo plate)stamped with big F from 1966on, three hole number plate from 1972 on
Serial numbers5 digits, ca. 50 – 80,000 rangelower numbershigher, starting with the letter L from 1964 on, 6 digits from 1965 on

Detail pictures

The thick rosewood slabboard
Compare the shape of the rosewood fingerboard (behind the nut) on a slabboard Strat (front) and a 1964 Strat (rear)
Polepieces of a 1961 pick-up
Single-line Kluson tuners
Decal with 2 patent numbers
Aluminium pick-guard shield, black bobbins pick-ups
Amps, Mark Knopfler gear

The King of Clean – Mark Knopfler’s Tone King Imperial amp – Hand-built vintage technology and sound

Everyone who has seen Mark Knopfler live on one of his recent tours might have notived that cool-looking turquoise combo amp next to Knopfler’s Marshall cabinets. Knopfler’s second guitarist Richard Bennet also plays one. It is the Tone King Imperial.

Tone King amps are built from selected quality parts by Mark Bartel in Baltimore. Mark does all the woodworking, upholstery, and electronics assembly himself to have total control about the sound and quality of his products.

The Imperial is a two-channel combo with reverb and tremolo. The output power is about 20 watts, coming from two 6V6 tubes. The two channel make use of 12AX7 pre-amp tube, and one 12AT7 driving the reverb, just like Fender amps from the sixties or seventies. In fact it reminds me a lot of a black-face Fender Deluxe amp, which also has a similar layout and one 12″ speaker. In fact you can read on the Tone King website that the rhythm channel aims for that Fender black-face sound. A volume, treble and bass control is all that is required here. Of course the spring reverb – a fundamental ingredient of the Fender sound – works for both channels (note that on Fender amps it only affects the second channel). It will not surprise you that the reverb circuit uses the same two-spring reverb tank  (acutronics) and the same tubes like Fender.

The second channel also features just three controls: volume, tone and mid-bite – so no bass and treble control here, just on a small Fender tweed amp from the 50ies. The mid-bite adds a midrange peak and tightens the low end, controling the overdrive tone character that can be blended from Fender tweed to Marshall style.

The speaker is custom designed and labelled with ‘Tone King 33’ – manufactured by Eminence (who also built the speakers in most silver-face Fender amps in the 70ies and 80ies).

The recommended retail price for the Tone King Imperial is 1995 USD. More infos on toneking.com.

On the last (2008) tour Mark Knopfler played his red Schecter Telecaster on the song Cannibals through the Tone King Imperial, his ’54 Stratocaster  on the song Our Shangri-La, and his signature MK Strat on Postcards from Paraguay and  True love will never fade. I guess it is the ‘king of clean’ for him and that he hardly ever uses the second channel. Another song to feature this fine amp is Hard Shoulder from Get Lucky (played on a Gretch 6120).

The Tone King Imperial on the 2008 tour. The red Marshall cabinets were driven by two Reinhard amps.
Technician Colin Barton working on Mark Knopfler's Tone King Imperial. Pictures courtesy Guy Fletcher.
Dire Straits/ Mark Knopfler live pictures and videos, Misc

Rare video of Brendan Crocker gig featuring Mark Knopfler

Today while surfing youtube I found this rare video which I have never seen before, showing Mark Knopfler as a guest on a Brendan Crocker gig in Leeds, June 18, 1989 (the youtube video title says July 18, June 18 is confirmed and I doubt that there was a second gig one month later). For those who don’t know him, Brendan Crocker is an old friend of Mark’s, also a member of the Notting Hillbillies.

Another guest on this gig was Dire Straits keyboarder Alan Clark.

Mark plays his Pensa MK-1, and on the right side of the stage- next to the bass player – we can spot his Sultans-of-Swing amp, the brown Fender Vibrolux.

I still have a vinyl Brendan Crocker EP single with three tracks from this gig (You Don’t Need Me Here, Railroad Blues, Georgia Crawl)

MK guitar style and licks

Rasgueado and other flamenco techniques in Sultans of Swing

Sultans of Swing from Dire Straits’  first album is surely one of THE songs that comes to mind when talking about fingerstyle guitar playing. In addition to Mark Knopfler’s unique playing style it also features some striking Spanish-sounding elements, starting from the chord  progression itself to some flamenco-like strumming techniques – which is this blog article, or rather the embedded video, is about.

The typical flamenco stroke is called Rasgueado (the Spanish word for strumming) – a particular “roll” of your right hand fingers. I am  really no master of the true flamenco style but I realized many years ago that Knopfler plays  something like this in numerous songs, and practised something that sounds similar – my version of the Rasgueado. I can do it in two different ways: pinky first to index finger, or vice versa. Both sound different but I am not completetly sure which one Knopfler makes use of (possibly both).

The video explains how I play it. I think the idea becomes clear. So, enjoy!

PS: The rasgueado sounds great with distorted power chords, too. Give it a try!

Effects, Mark Knopfler gear, Recording

Rhett Davies and the sound of the first Dire Straits album

Rhett Davies - The Sultan of Sound. Engineer on the first Dire Straits album

In the blog post about the Sultans of Swing lead guitar track that was made available through the Guitar Hero 5 game we had some interesting discussions about some technical aspects of the guitar sound. One was whether the effects we hear (compression, chorus, reverb) were added later in the mix or were recorded right with the instrument track. Unfortunately there is no direct information available so we will probably never know for sure. However, I recently read some articles or interviews with Rhett Davies – the sound engineer on the first Dire Straits album. He told a few interesting things about recording the Avalon album with Roxy Music in the early 80ies – so from ‘almost’ the same time as the Straits’ debut album (1978). I think some of these things were general preferences and might be true for the Dire Straits album as well.

Here are a few excerpts (from Sound on Sound):

One feature of Rhett Davies’ production style that surprised Bob Clearmountain when they first worked together was his willingness to print effects to tape with instrument recordings. “Generally speaking, and this applies to Avalon, if we were working on a particular sound and that sound had a delay or a reverb, I would print that with the signal. I love delays. We used the Roland Chorus Echos a lot, and I still do today, I love them.

My guess is – if it was not a Roland Jazz Chorus, as some rumour says at least for Sultans of Swing – then  it maybe was the Roland Space Echo 301 which was mentioned by Rhett Davies in an article on a Bryan Ferry solo album in 2007, while the famous Roland Dimension D was as it seems introduced later,  around 1979. Knopfler also had a 301 in his guitar rack on the Making Movies tour in 1980/81.

continued:
Quarter-note triplet delays are my favourites. [Check out my article about quarter note triplets if you are not familiar with the idea behind them] Anything that creates cross-rhythms is what I was always looking for, so if we were working with a rhythm box, I’d always be experimenting with delays, just to create something more than the plain thing that was there. Obviously it depends on the instrument, but if you’re talking about basic backing-track instruments then you’re trying to create something.

My concept was always that anybody could put the track up and push the faders up and it would sound as it’s supposed to sound. When we mixed Flesh & Blood, Bob couldn’t believe it, because nobody printed delays with the signal. If it was something like the lead vocal, I’d print that to a separate track, but we were still working on 24 tracks, and if it was a guitar and that was part of the sound it got printed. Roxy enjoyed working that way, because there’s nothing worse than thinking ‘It doesn’t sound as good as it did last week, what’s different? I’m sure that’s the same setting.’ This way, it’s always there, and it makes a faster way of working. I could put a track up in a minute and it was ready to do an overdub, so if we had musicians coming in that we wanted to try on two or three songs, it was really fast just to change the tape, and the song was ready to go. I also always used to try to keep an instrumental rough mix on tape as a working mix, so you could just whack up two faders and it was there.

So, maybe the chorus was the 301. The Space Echo 301 was – as the name suggest – mainly an echo – a tape delay to be more concrete, but it also has a chorus effect. I remember that Mark was once asked about the delay in the intro of Down to the Waterline, and his answer was:

“I have no idea what that was. Rhett Davies was the engineer on that record, and he’s in love with Roland Chorus Ensembles, so it might well have been that. I actually use a Roland onstage. ” (from this interview with Guitar Player magazine)

Roland Space Echo 301 - delay and chorus

I think if Davies tend to record effects with the instrument onto the track, the rumour of the Dan Armstrong Orange Squeezer as the compressor on this album becomes a bit more likely. Too bad we will maybe never know for sure. I did a Google search for Rhett Davies but to no avail: he does not have a personal homepage or something else which allows us to contact him, at least I have not found anything so far.

Misc

Why not become an author for this blog?

After more than 100 articles in this blog I am still not running out of ideas for future posts. I just wish I had more time for blogging and producing video tutorials.
I know that many readers of this blog are also experts and wonder if anyone would like to write an article for the blog. Dermot was the first with his article about his sunburst Schecter Strat copy. So, if you feel you have something interesting to say (e.g. about your guitar, about playing techniques, about some incident in your life that has to do with Mark Knopfler or guitar playing, or some product review or whatever) this blog might be the perfect forum to reach the public.

WordPress (the software behind this blog) allows sophisticated rights managements so you can get an author role and can log into the backend. Writing and layouting are really easy, so don’t worry. Of course you can also simply send your text and pictures via email and I can do it for you.

I would like to  have the last word about releasing an article to make sure that it matches certain quality standards.

If you are interested, please use the contact form (under pages) in the left sidebar or the comment function of this post to get in touch.

Looking forward to what might come 🙂

Guitar in general, Misc, Vintage guitars

Guitar portrait: 1976 Gibson MK-81 acoustic guitar (Mark series)

With this article,  I want to feature my good old acoustic guitar: a Gibson MK-81 from 1976.

I got this guitar more than 20 years ago. I was looking for an acoustic guitar and was trying out all the guitars in that shop. After a while the shop owner brought one more from some room in the back,  saying I should try out this one, it was special. This was the Gibson MK-81, and in fact it sounded different from all the other guitars, it sounded more ‘expensive’ in a way, with a warm bass and brilliant treble, like a great HIFI speaker compared with a cheap one. He told me that this guitar had been damaged damage and was not professionally repaired (the bridge had solved from the top and had been glued back to its position, additionally fixed with two screws), and that it normally costs more than 3 times the money I wanted to spend.
Well, we agreed on a deal (I had to part from a nice Tokai Telecaster copy I had back then) and I took this guitar home with me. The damage could be repaired professionally for about 100,- € by the way.

The MK series

I had never heard about these guitars before, and there was not much information available. Remember, this was before the Internet, so you had to look through guitar books at the shop when searching for a particular information. Today it is so much easier. The story behind the Mark series seems to be like this:

In May of `73 Gibson began the Mark story by contacting Dr. Adrian Houtsma, Professor of Acoustic Physics at MIT, to confirm some research Gibson itself had initiated. Receiving a favorable review, Gibson then went to Dr. Kasha, who was at the time, a chemical physicist working as Director of the Institute of Molecular Biophysics at Florida State University. Combining the findings from Gibson` R&D department and Drs. Houtsma and Kasha, the company finally landed on the doorstep of well known luthier Richard Schneider, who was charged with making the scientific information practical, designing a guitar that fit with Gibson`s aesthetics and capable of being put into production. The Mark series was born…

The Mark series was no commercial success, rather the contrary as it seems. It turned out that science alone was not capable of building perfect guitars made of wood, a material that is unpredictable  because each piece of wood has individual features. After only 3 or 4 years Gibson dropped the Mark series again.

But these guitars were not really bad, and I heard from many owners how much they love their MK’s. The complete series consisted of 5 models, the MK 35, the MK 53, the MK 72, the MK 81, and the MK 99 (the higher the model number, the better the materials, and the higher the price).

Here is a page from a Gibson catalogue from that time that shows the different features of the different models:

The MK-81

Both the rim and back of my MK-81 are made of solid (!) rosewood (possibly Brazilian, but not sure), the top is solid spruce. The neck is curly maple, the fingerboard is ebony with mother-of-pearl inlays. There are some fancy details that make sure that this was the top-model of the production range (in fact, the MK-99 seems to be custom-made by luthier Richard Schneider himself only) like  the gold plated hardware or the black and red bindings.

It is a special guitar in fact. It is very deep, and the body and headstock shape looks somewhat unusual. The sound is warm and bright, a bit bell-like. With the heavy Gibson jumbo frets and the “fast” neck shape it plays almost like an electric.

Pictures of my MK 81

The soundhole ring looks like wood but is plastic
Note the red bindings
Ebony fingerboard with mother-of-pearl block inlays

The sides and the back are solid rosewood (probably Brazilian)

Youtube videos

Two of my latest youtube videos feature this guitar.

If you want the full story and more details of the Mark series, see this article in vintage guitar magazine.

MK guitar style and licks

Southbound Again riff

Here is a small video clip in which I play the Southbound Again riff, this time the studio version (I put another video online with the completely different live version a few weeks ago).

I played it in standard tuning. A few years ago I read an interview where Mark said that it was open G tuning (which somewhat surprised me here). Anyway, it works fine in standard tuning I think.

The amp here is a small tweed Princeton clone, no effects.

Misc, MK guitar style and licks

Sensational: Sultans of Swing guitar track solo – without backing tracks – from Guitar Hero 5

I reported about the vocals only and karaoke tracks of Sultans of Swing in the last post. If you read all the comments there you will already have heard the latest news: a guitar-only track is also available. They all seem to be from the Guitar Hero 5 game.

It seems the makers of the game had access to the multitrack recording of Sultans. The guitar track does not only include the lead guitar but also the rhathm guitars, switching between both which means you hear the rhythm guitars whenenever the lead guitar is not playing. When it is, you hear only the lead guitar. I guess this was done with a gate using a sidechain input. A gate is a device that can shut down another track while the input signal is above a specified level.

It is really amazing to hear the guitar alone, after knowing the song for over 30 years. There are many details which you simply couldn’t hear in the mix – lot’s of “noises” like scratche and dead notes, some low level tones etc. Also you can clearly hear the chorus effect, probably from the Roland Jazz Chorus, and there seems something like a compressor or rather limiter that even introduces some distortion.

As it seems you cannot buy these tracks but they are part of a game software, and as it is only one instrument and not a full composition – I guess it does not inflict with copyrights when I put in a sound clip here: