Vintage guitars

Guitar portrait: 1983 Squier Stratocaster JV pink metallic

After the portrait of the fiesta red 1983 Squier Stratocaster, today’s article features another Japanese vintage Squier, this time an ultra-rare model in all original pink metallic finish.

Since all important facts about that great JV series that was available in 1982-83 only have been mentioned in two previous articles (the mentioned portrait of the  fiesta red 1983 Squier Stratocaster, and the article about Japanese vintage guitars), I will not repeat these things and concentrate only on this particular guitar.

It is the only one in metallic pink I have seen, and before I did not even know that this colour was available. In fact the first Squier Strats were all sunburst, and in 1983 fiesta red, black, and white were added. These were all the colours those Squiers for the world-wide market (the export models) were produced in, but there were a few more for models for the domestic (the Japanese) market: California blue, candy-apple red (CAR), and pink metallic (which replaced CAR in late 1983). There are a few rather small differences between the domestic and the export models, with the most striking beeing the pick-ups which were not the US made Fender pick-ups but Japanese pick-ups called SQ-5 which are excellent and should not be considered as inferior.

The finish is thick glossy poly, just like on the export Squiers. Another difference however is the fretboard curve which is probably 9″ as compared to the 7.25″ of the export models or a Fender vintage Strat. I personally like that 9″ radius because it allows a lower action without string buzzing but still feels like a typical Strat. It seems most CAR Squiers had a shorter scale but this guitar has standard scale length.

It sounds great (like most of these JV Squiers) and I like it a lot.

1983 Squier Stratocaster pink

MK guitar style and licks, Vintage guitars

Romeo and Juliet on National Style-O

This week was again a rather busy one, so not much time for the next article. All I have is a video of me playing Romeo and Juliet on that National Style-O (read style-“Oh”, the letter not the number, see this article for some detail pictures of this guitar), but there are no instructions or explanation. If you want you can check it out nevertheless, see below.

This guitar is really nice. I had a steel-body Dobro before I got this one, it was the closest thing you could get in the late 80ies but it was nothing compared to the real thing. It is everything but easy to play, the neck is really huge, and you need a lot of left-hand pressure. It has many dings and dents, and the finish has been totally worn on some places. It is in much worse condition compared to Knopfler’s, and for this reason is not as valuable as his, actually it was comparingly cheap, less than one of those new Nationals.

With exception of the plastic tuner pegs it is all original. Unfortunately the resonator had some cracks and tiny rips. I prefered to fix these with clear super-glue or tiny pieces of adhesive tape, instead of replacing the resonator. The sound on the video is recorded by the camera so it is not the best quality, and without a/b comparision it is probably difficult to judge, but everyone who played it liked it.

Here is the video in youtube high-quality, if your internet connection is not fast enough, click here to watch it directly on youtube in standard quality. Unfortunately my high-quality videos have some sound artefacts (which the file I uploaded doesn’t have), no idea why (any help or suggestions are appreciated), it seems youtube uses some denoising algorithm that causes this.

MK guitar style and licks

Mark Knopfler licks using the Memphis scale

This article is about a “two-strings scale” sometimes called Memphis Scale. Normally these two strings are not adjacent strings, instead you skip one string and play licks e.g. on the D- and B-string (as in the video examples below), or on the G- and high E-string.

With the help of these licks you will increase your vocabulary on the guitar. Whenever you are in danger of running out of ideas or feel chained to a standard (e.g. the pentatonic) scale, these melodic, two-voiced licks guarantee a sudden change and a new colour in your way of playing.

Examples of these licks can be found in a great number of  Mark Knopfler / Dire Straits  tunes, surely to many to name them all. Some nice examples are:

The intro of In the Gallery
Sultans of Swing
Down to the Waterline
Wild West End
Single Handed Sailor
So Far Away
Precious Angel (Bob Dylan featuring Mark Knopfler)

How do these licks work?

First, have a look at the following chord, in this example a G major chord at the 7th fret (the video examples  start with a C chord in the open position). We will build licks that are played on the D and B strings. The notes of this G major chord on these strings are coloured red (the note B on the D string, and a G on the B string).

Below you can see a second way to play a G major chord, it is at the 10th fret position. Again, the notes on the D and B strings (this time a D and a B) are coloured in red.

These four notes on the fingerboard:

The next logical step is to add certain “connecting” notes to create smooth transitions from the first position of the lick (8 and 9th fret) into the second position at the 12th fret. These notes are the C (D-string 10th fret) and the A (B-string 10th fret) – on the picture these notes are green.

This is a typical pattern (here for G major) and many licks in the video are based on it.

Which Fingers of the Left hand?

As a rule, always use the second (middle) finger of the left hand for the notes on the D string, and the first or third finger for the notes on the B string here: use the first finger if the B string note is on a lower fret than the D string note, the third if it is on the same fret. Both fingers stay in touch with the strings whenever possible.

Video

If your connection is too slow to watch this video in high quality, go to youtube and watch it in normal quality.

Tabs for some licks from the video

Intro of In the Gallery

Chicken picking (from a live version of Skateaway)

Notting Hillbillies – That’s where I belong

Bob Dylan – Precious Angel

Dire Straits/ Mark Knopfler live pictures and videos, Guitars, Mark Knopfler gear

Mark Knopfler’s Rickenbacker of Portobello Belle live in 1981

On the Making movies tour in 1981, Mark Knopfler played a Rickenbacker guitar on Portobello Belle. To my knowledge only one single picture exists with this guitar which is the one below.

Since I have this picture at a rather high resolution, I also put in an enlarged version with just that guitar.

I would be lying if I said I am an expert on Rickenbacker guitars, so feel free to suggest which model it is using the comment function.

Guitar in general, Guitars, Mark Knopfler gear

Pickguard wiring of vintage Schecter Strat

Here is an original drawing from Schecter Guitar Research showing the wiring layout of a vintage Schecter Stratocaster pickguard with those F500T pick-ups. I found it in an old German book about guitar electronics from the 80ies, and it seems to be pretty rare so I want to share it with you. It is the same layout that should originally have been in all of Mark Knopfler’s Schecter Strats.

Schecter Strat pickguard wiring

An interesting little detail is the little capacitor and an additional resistor at the volume poti. The capacitor is 0.001 uF (= 1 nF), the resistor is 150 kOhms. The 0.001uF cap is the same value as you can find on a vintage Fender Telecaster. Its purpose is to prevent treble loss when the volume is reduced. With the cap alone you will even get some treble boost when rolling back the volume poti. The resistor equalizes this effect, something you might want to try out since it costs only a few cents. You have to solder the cap and the resistor in parallel from the wiper (middle terminal) to the input terminal (the one with the cable from the pick-up selector). That’s all.

Also note the value of the tone cap. It is 0.01uF. This is much less than Fender (Fender vintage would be 0.1uF, later Fenders had 0.05uF). For this reason rolloing back the tone poti will give you more of a midrange sound compared to Fender.

Easy stuff for beginners, MK guitar style and licks, Understanding music

Some Mark Knopfler licks using double-string bends

What I mean with double-string bends are licks that are played on two or more strings and one or more of these are bent. Such licks appear in countless Mark Knopfler or Dire Straits songs.

The following video clip demonstrates how to use such licks, and their relation to the chords they are based upon. Note that the last licks (Once Upon a time and Sultans of Swing) were covered in one of my former articles.

Most stuff in this video should be self-explaining, so here it is.

This video is in high quality. If your connection speed is too low, click here to watch it on youtube in normal quality.

Guitars, Mark Knopfler gear

Mark Knopfler’s stolen sunburst Schecter Strat of Tunnel of Love

In 1980 Mark Knopfler bought some Schecter guitars (probably 4 Strats and a Telecaster) at Rudy’s Music Stop in New York. These were two red Strats (see my article about these here), one blue Strat, a black Telecaster, and a wonderful sunburst Strat. The last was the guitar that was played on the song Tunnel of Love on the Making Movies album. It seems he liked especially this one very much, he even said in an interview that it was possibly the best sounding guitar he ever had (however, this is something he used to say rather often about the latest guitar he got 😉 ).

Unfortunately this guitar was stolen soon after the recording of Making Movies (if I remember correctly out of the car in Deptford, possibly after a rehearsal). This was some time before the first gig of the Making Movies tour because on this tour he played another sunburst Schecter Strat that he bought as a direct replacement for the stolen one. Both were similar, had probably the same pick-ups and the same basic features. Some differences that make both easy to distinguish on pictures are the dot markers (the first one had them while the second one was without) and the location of the output jack (the first had the normal Strat type recessed output jack, the second one had it on the body side, just like a Telecaster).

There are not too many details that are known about the stolen Schecter. The pick-ups  were most likely Schecter F500Ts (quarter inch alnico magnets, the T stands for tapped coil), just like in the replacement guitar. According to Tom Anderson (former employee at Schecter who now builds his own guitars) the body of the sunburst Strat was birch (unfortunately we don’t know of which of the two sunburst Strats). The neck was beautifully figured bird’s eye maple.

As he did not have it for a long time, there is only a small number of pictures of this guitar which all seem to be from the same photo session. To me this guitar looked incredibly cool, I love the two-tone sunburst which looks for some reason much better than on the replacement Strat. Below you can see all pictures I have of this guitar.

Easy stuff for beginners, MK guitar style and licks, Understanding music

Calling Elvis chord analysis – Major, minor, no-third, power chords

This time I will start with some very basic stuff: major and minor chords.

Every guitar beginner soon learns that there is e.g. an A major chord, and an A minor chord. Obviously they are similar, they just differ in one single note (in case of the first position chords, in the example it is either the 2nd (A) or 1st (Am) fret on the b string).

testing
The minor and major chords only differ in one note, this is the third note of the corresponding scale.

You need to understand that both a major and a minor chord consists of three different notes: the first, the third, and the fifth note of the corresponding scale.

Example: Take the C major scale (C D E F G A B C), notes number 1,3 & 5 are: C E G
These are the notes a  C major chord consists of

The C minor scale is C D Eb F G Ab Bb C, notes 1,3 & 5 are: C Eb G

Since a guitar has 6 strings, any guitar chord can consist of up to six notes, but in case of a simple major or minor chord, there are only three DIFFERENT notes (e.g. the first position A major chords has the notes – low to high – E A E A C# E  = three different notes.

Let’s leave the basics now. Besides major and minor, there is another possibility: Any major or minor chord can be played in such a way that there is no third (=the third note of the scale) at all, e.g. play a normal open position A chord, but dampen (or do not hit) the b and the high e string, or press down the d and g string on the 2nd fret (with your index finger), and the b and high e string on the 5th fret (with the pinky).

Whenever a chord only consists of the root note and the fifth note of the scale, it does not ponly sound better with heavy distortion, it also allows you to play lead licks both with major or minor scale licks
Whenever a chord only consists of the root note and the fifth note of the scale, it does not only sound better with heavy distortion, it also allows you to play lead licks both with major or minor scale licks

In both cases the chord will consist of only TWO different notes (E and A), which are 1 & 5 of the scale, but no third. Since it was the third that determines whether the chord is major or minor, these chords are neutral so to say – they are neither major nor minor. Often these chords are called power chords.

So, why this name, and what are they good for? Especially in combination with a lot of distortion, the third often adds some weird sounding harmonic effects, in other words, power chords sound better for heavy stuff. For this reason they often replace both major or minor chords in all kinds of music that rely on distortion. Mark Knopfler also uses them a lot, e.g. most chords in Money for Nothing are power chords.

Another aspect is that – as the chord itself is “neutral” – you can play lead with major scale or minor scale licks, as you want, both will match the chord nicely – but of course sound completely different. This is something that happens in the Dire Straits song Calling Elvis quite a lot. The key of the song is B (major or minor would indeed be a valid question here). The third note of the scale can be a D# (major) or a D (minor). Note that in fact both appear at differents parts of the song, e.g. the verse makes use of the D (just listen to the vocals melody), or the guitar run at the stop in the middle of the song also contains the D, while that fast, repeating pedal steel lick between the verses has the D#, but no D. We can say the song moves from minor to major, and back.

Similarly, it is really a question whether Money for Nothing is G major or G minor. Most other chords in this song are a hint towards minor, but the E chord at the end of the refrain points toward major. It is important to be aware that nobody in the band plays the third of the G chord*, be aware that a Gm on the rhythm guitar would really spoil this effect. The G is rather neutral here.

*The riff itself however contains the minor third – a Bb note – and is thus an indication for minor, but the minor third can also be played over major chords in blues style music, where it is called a “blue note”

I remember reading somewhere that Mark used to direct the band shouting “no thirds, no thirds” on a recording session. It is really helpful to be aware of this often neglected aspect of song writing, and of some new possibilities resulting from it.

Effects, Mark Knopfler gear, MK guitar style and licks

The Dan Armstrong Orange Squeezer compressor – Did Mark Knopfler really use it?

Today the Orange Squeezer compressor by Dan Armstrong is an almost legendardy guitar effect. An essential portion of this fame is probably due to the fact that it is often named as an ingredient for the early Mark Knopfler / Dire Straits sound. Ironically this goes back to my old Dire Straits Guitar Page which was the first site in the web to mention the Orange Squeezer as part of the MK gear, so today it should be up to me again to clarify what is really sure and what is rumour.

What is sure, what is rumour?

First of all, there is no clear evidence that Mark Knopfler really used one of theses on any DS or MK album. The first hint however I got was from Andy Brauer’s column in I think Guitar Player magazine in the late 80ies where he claimed that Knopfler’s famous Stratocaster sounds were achieved with an Orange Squeezer and an Aphex Exciter. He didn’t give a source for this information, but I meanwhile know that he worked for Mark Knopfler when he was recording Randy Newman’s Land of Dream album (Andy runs a shop for amp repair and gear rental in the Los Angeles area, his article did not clearly state whether the Orange Squeezer was used on the Randy Newman session, or on the first Dire Straits albums, or is generally a part of Knopfler’s gear).

Source number two is the official tour program book of the Communique tour. It features an equipment list, and the last item in this list is the Orange Squeezer. However, this list was not specified for the tour or any particular album, it just said “Mark Knopfler plays…” Strangely Klaus Dewes, the author of a German book about Dire Straits published in 1980, also included the same equipment list in his book, but this time without the Orange Squeezer!

Thirdly, I once asked David Knopfler about it who mailed me that he believes they had one, but he didn’t remember for what or when it was ever used.

Conclusion: it seems likely that the Orange Squeezer was part of the gear, but noone knows any details.

Some facts about the Orange Squeezer

Anyway, so what exactly is the Orange Squeezer? Dan Armstrong developed a whole series of guitar effects in the 70ies. All of these were little coloured boxes with a plug to put it directly into the guitar output jack (after swapping two internal cables they could also be pluuged on the amp side, what makes more sense with a Strat because they don’t fit into the Strat’s recessed output jack). There was the Blue Clipper (fuzz), Green Ringer (an octaver), Yellow Humper (boost of certain frequencies), Red Ranger (booster, tone modifier), Purple Peaker (boost of certain frequencies), and of course the Orange Squeezer.

The official (yes, it is available again as a reproduction) product description of the Orange Squeezer says:

The Orange Squeezer compresses the dynamics of the music or of the individual notes without adversely affecting the attack of the note and without adding any significant noise or distortion to the signal. An internal adjustment lets the user adjust the output level to suit his instrument and his playing style, while the compression threshold is pre-set at the factory.

In other words: it is a simple compressor that works with a fixed compression setting, the user cannot control any parameters like compression ration, attack & release time etc. (for newbies: a compressor equalizes volume differences, your playing sounds smoother and remains at a constant volume, as a side effect, the sustain of a note becomes longer, for more information see this Wikipedia article)

Orange Squeezer

What does it sound like?

It is not really true that it does not add any distortion, not much, but there is a subtle distortion that adds warmth to the sound. Many players who tried it agreed that it sounds knoplflerish so this is another hint that it was indeed used (leaving out the question if the same players would have said the same if they hadn’t known that Knopfler used it !?)

The compression is rather subtle, it is difficult to get heavily compressed sounds with a Strat (which has a rather low output, the louder your guitar, the more compression you will automatically get). However, some early Dire Straits songs – such as Down to the Waterline, In the Gallery, or Lady Writer – feature guitar sounds with much compression. The only way I found to get this amount of compression from the Orange Squeezer is to use some booster before it in the signal chain. Of course it is still possible that Knopfler used one on these songs, and that more compression was added with outboard gear, which is from the mixing desk (and it is also possible that all compression was done alone during mixing).

There is another aspect to consider: compression – even a slight compression as from the orange Squeezer – can avoid a lot of distortion from the guitar amp. This is because louder signales – for example when you play two or three notes together instead of a single note – are compressed more, which means lower in volume. For this reason the amp distorts less on these notes. Have you ever noticed that many early Dire Straits guitar sounds are not that ultra-clean as most people think? In fact there is often a good deal of subtle distortion, e.g. on Down to the Waterline, Southbound Again, but also on Sultans of Swing. But what happens when you try to adjust your amp to such an amount of distortion – without using a compressor? Well, when it sounds right for single notes, it automatically distorts too much when playing more than one string, you will loose that clean sound. With compression it is different, you can adjust the amp to a warm subtle distortion, but the sound remains rather clean and Knopfler like no matter what you play. Try it out! This behaviour can be considered as another hint that in fact a compressor was used before the amp, which means as a guitar effect instead of outboard gear during mixing.

(you will find a sound clip at the end of this article)

Different clones compared to the original

An original Orange Squeezer from the 70ies is hard to get, and prices went up during the last decades (I am sure partly thanks to me). In the 90ies a company called WD offered a first OS clone which I bought and still have. Unfortunately they did not copy the circuit with 100% accuracy, so their copy sounds somewhat different (brighter, but still great because it has a warm sound with that nice little punch that any compressor adds). Later there was a flood of companies who copied it (the original circuit is really simple, even a good start for any DIY newby). I also got one from General Guitar Gadgets later but for some reason I don’t like this one that much. It doesn’t sound that “open” to me, hard to explain in words. A few years later I managed to get an original vintage Orange Squeezer on ebay, and in fact this one sounds the best. The GGG clone was built into a floor stomp box by the way and had the volume control on the outside, which was very handy. I built the original circuit into this box and this combination is what I still use a lot.

Finally, a sound clip can say more than a thousand words, so listen to the following sound clip to hear the Squeezer in action. I demonstrate the aspects explained in this article, the last few minutes is me jamming on some Mark Knopfler tunes.

 

Misc, Understanding music

Loudness War – Louder is better? Why CDs are reduced in dynamics

Here comes an article not really related to guitar but possibly interesting for everyone who likes to listen to music.

The term “loudness war” is something you might have come across when talking or reading about modern music productions. There is even a Wikipedia article on this matter. I will explain in short what exactly is meant with it, and I will give some listening samples from Knopfler / Dire Straits recordings.

When music is recorded to a digital medium, it is encoded as numerical values. The highest possible value automatically defines an absolute volume limit – also called ceiling. This volume level is called 0 dBFS (decibel full scale). From a technical point it makes sense to record music as loud as possible to the medium, otherwise you had a bit more  noise or distortion (due to quantization effects). On the other hand you must not exceed the volume ceiling because this would result in audible distortion (clipping) or clicks.

Now imagine a recording of a live concert, and let’s assume the loudest part of the concert is the final chord of the last song. The “natural approach” would be to adjust the volume so that this highest part reaches exactly 0 dBFS, which means the whole rest of the concert would be at some lower volume. This approach is indeed applied (at least approximately) to some recordings of classical music.

In the music industry however, a central concern is – as everywhere else – competition. Of course everyone who performs music wants to sound good, and if possible to sound better than competitors. For some reasons we tend to think something sounds better than someting else when it is louder, so if you compare two pieces of music, and the first is recorded slightly louder than the second, it seems to sound richer, deeper, more brilliant at the treble end, fuller in the bass – simply better in comparision. Or imagine two guitar pick-ups, one is just a bit louder than the other – most people would indeed say it sounds better.

In any ‘competetive situation’ – e.g. different songs are played by a radio station, or in a disco club – it might  be better to be louder than others. This comes to an extreme in advertising , music and voice should be as loud as possible.

This consideration leads to the next logical conclusion: why not simply increase the volume of the live concert of our example, and reduce the volume of just that loudest part at the end a bit so that it does not distort? You will get a higher average volume, and compared with the original version your recording will seem to sound better.

What already becomes clear here is that a further increase of volume is only possible if loud parts are reduced in volume, in other words, you decrease dynamics (which is nothing but the technical term for the volume span from the lowest to the loudest parts of your music). As a rule:

louder = less dynamics

This image shows two similar wave forms: In the left picture, the peak reaches the ceiling (red line) and thus prevents further volume increase. In the right picture the same wave form is compressed, the height of the peak (and thus the dynamic range) is reduced. Next the volume is increased so that the peak reaches the ceiling again. Note how the average volume (blue line) is increased, this wave form sounds louder.

When you look at a piece of music in a wave editor, you will see your music as a landscape of volume peaks – the louder something is, the higher these peaks. Here the term ‘ceiling’ becomes clear: a peak can only reach such a height which is up to the ceiling, more is not possible. If you want to increase the level of the part containing the peak, you must decrease the height of the peak before. This is an artificial change of your music, a reduction of dynamics.

The volume reduction can be achieved on different ways, e.g. you can tell your software to decrease the local volume within a special area around your loudest peak. A more practical way is the use of a device called compressor (or limiter, which is not the same but works similar). This is why the reduction of dynamics is also called compression. (Note that this has nothing to do with “data reduction algorithms” which reduce quality to get smaller file size, something the mp3 algorithm does.)

Normally all commercial music is compressed – not only these days but also some decades ago. It is important to understand that compression is not really bad, it has some important advantages. Besides the possible volume increase, compression makes sure that you don’t get disturbing volume changes. Imagine yourself at home, conversing with some guests, and you have some music running in the background. You want your music to stay more or less at the same level, the level you have adjusted your stereo to. If your music was played by a good band, it might have too much dynamics for this particular situation. Loud passages would disturb your conversation, low passages would be too low. Or imagine yourself driving in your car, the engine creates a certain background noise. Without compression, low passages will be lost behind that noise, or if you increase volume, loud passage would be too loud. So ..

… dynamic compression is not bad itself, there are good reasons for it.

At a live concert the situation is different. You probably don’t want to chat a lot with other concert visitors, instead you will pay full attention to the musical performance. Here it makes sense to have the complete dynamic range the band is able to produce. Loud passages will rock, low passages add contrast. When you are at home and really want to listen to music intensively, a dynamic,  uncompressed recording will leave a much stronger impression than a flat, heavily compressed one. A last technical reason for compression is that compressed music requires only a fraction of electric power. Small devices like mp3-players that don’t have a built-in  powerful amplifier might distort when you try to play uncompressed music at a certain volume level.

Digital software mastering tool (compression and more, the Optimaster for the Creamware Scope system I use)

The loudness war

Digital compressors react much faster than analog ones. When digital compressors became availabe, it was possible to compress music much more without getting strange sounding artefacts (like pumping, flat sound). No wonder that soon music was more compressed and the overall volume was increased. Suddenly everybody wanted to be louder than the others, it was most important to have the ‘hottest’ mix. As a result of this heavy compression, all parts of the song have almost the same volume, the intro with only a few instruments is as loud as the final guitar solo at the end. And all songs on your CD have the same (=the highest possible) volume, suddenly ballads are as loud as powerful rock songs. Needless to say that many nuances of music are lost, also heavily compressed music is more exhausting to listen to over time.

Note that different radio stations are also in a ‘loudness war’ – they have to compete and want to be louder than other stations. They use their own compressors to even further increase the volume of any music they play, as a result music looses more and more of its full potential.

This image shows the volume of different remastered version of the Beatles’ ‘Something’. Note that short volume peaks that make further volume increase impossibly possibly cannot be seen at this zoom stage. Also not that in the last stage  (2000) almost all parts of the song have the same volume.

The way out

The only way out is to stop this war, to leave more natural dynamics, which means to leave the music at a lower volume. This is no problem for anyone who really wants to listen to this music, he can adjust the volume at his stereo exactly at the level he wants it to be – it is only a kind of problem in the ‘competition situation’. Responsible artists don’t care about this and release their music as it sounds best – however, they still have to find a compromise for the different listen situations described before.

Some examples

* Do you remember the remastered versions of all Dire Straits CDs that came out a few years ago? Besides a bit of different different EQ’ing in some cases, the main difference was the higher volume, due to more compression. But they still sound alright because there is no overuse of compression.
* The Communique CD is more compressed than the first album (because it was intended to have an impact on American radio), the drums and bass sound rather flat for this reason.
*The Passalong / Crowfly  concert recordings of Mark Knopfler’s 2005 tour were heavily compressed which is the reason I don’t really like them.
*There is a bootleg called ‘On every Planet’ from the last Dire Straits tour in 1992. It seems it was directly recorded from the mixing desk to a DAT tape, and then written to CD (only change was a sample rate conversion from 48 kHz to 44.1 kHz). The volume is lower than a commercial live CD, but if you adjust the volume accordingly, it has an astonishing dynamic range (just listen to the outro of On Every Street or Private Investigations).

This picture shows On Every Street from the uncompressed On Every Planet bootleg, note the volume differences, especially between the parts before and after the break (guitar only, at ca. 80% of the song)

And here the same song from the official (and thus compressed) On the Night CD, note that all parts have almost the same volume.

* The concerts broadcasted by Germany’s NDR3 station are heavily compressed and sound flat, the ones from WDR2 are alright, so are normally the ones from BBC.

You can listen to the following sound file to hear some of these examples. Listen to it as it is and note the volume differences. Then listen to it again, and always adjust your volume level to equalize the differences. Note the resulting difference in dynamics and feel.

 

Sound clip:

a) original recording of Sultans of Swing

b) remastered version , note the higher volume

c) On Every Street from the uncompressed On Every Planet bootleg (highlighted part in the picture below) , note the drastic volume changes

d) On Every Street from the compressed On The Night CD. Note the constant volume before and after the break due to compression, even that low guitar break is much louder, generally there are only small volume differences

Picture of the sound clip (highlighted part is c)

If you are interested in more technical details, refer to the Wikipedia article on the loudness war: For the German readers who want to learn more about technical aspects of music and recording, my book Das eigene Musikstudio might be helpful which you can buy directly at Amazon following the link below (if you ever want to buy it, please use this direct link since I will get a small commission in this case only).

More info on this book here.