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.

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

Mark Knopfler licks around the 7/9 chord

The last poll about what you would like to read here is still running (so vote if you haven’t yet), but it seems to be clear that many readers want to read about licks (or rather want to see something as video I guess). So here a quick reaction (to be honest, I started to work on this video anyway 😉 )

This post is about a typical Mark Knopfler lick which is based on the notes of the 7/9 chord, the chord we are talking about is the following one (in this example a E7/9):

This chord is nothing special, special however is Mark Knopfler’s way to fret it, which is often like this:

The difference is the bass note, instead of an E (the root note) he plays the B on the low E string (the fifth note o fthe E major scale).

Now add the following notes which are played before the chord is played. First play the red notes, then the blue notes, then the chord (black notes). The left hand fingers remain the same on all those notes on the low E and D strings, if you want you can slide from one position into the next.

Watch the following video to see what kind of licks you can do with these notes (excerpts from The Bug / Eastbound Train, Mississippi Blues, Lions).

Easy stuff for beginners, Guitar in general, Mark Knopfler gear, Misc, Misc, MK guitar style and licks, Understanding music, Vintage guitars

Poll on what you would like to see here

I set up a poll about your wishes for future articles, it can be found under pages (so that it will be up for some time) or directly here (up to 4 possible answers).

If you have further suggestions, please use the comment function on that page (click here) instead of the one under this article. Thanks.

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Guitar in general, Vintage guitars

Guitar portrait: 1983 Squier JV Stratocaster, fiesta red

Some general info about Japanese vintage guitars from the early 80ies was subject in one of the last articles. This time I want to feature my fiesta red Squier Strat from the almost legendary JV series.

It was simply the overall quality of these guitars that left such a deep impact when they appeared on the scene in about 1982. These Squiers were copies of vintage Strats, to be precise, of a ’57 or ’62 Stratocaster. Other companies like Tokai or Greco had started to copy vintage Strat in detail at a really high quality shortly before, and the Squiers were Fender’s reaction to this trend: if we cannot stop the others, we can do the same ourselve, so the made a deal with the Fujigen Gakki company (who built Greco guitars). The very first guitars had a decal saying “Fender Stratocaster” with a small “Made in Japan” but this was soon changed to “Squier Stratocaster made by Squier”.

Generally, the term copy was redefined with these guitars because it is probably fair to say that their quality was better than of the normal American Fender Stratocaster of that time.

The featured guitar is from the second year of mass production, from the last months of the JV series. The name JV stands for Japanese vintage, it was the prefix of the serial number (this guitar is JV74356).

1983 Squier Stratocaster fiesta red

It is an export model which means it was built for mainly the European and American market. There were also domestic models for the Japanese market which were available in more different colours (candy apple red, california blue, or metallic pink) but these did not have US pick-ups like the export models. In fact the export guitars had the same pick-ups that Fender had introduced with their own vintage Stratocaster model that appeared about the same time.

This was a clever marketing idea because on the one hand it made people assume the sound quality was comparable to the much more expensive American guitars (which it was anyway), and on the other hand this was a logical explananation for this. I don’t think that the models with Japanese pick-ups sound noticably worse, but this way Fender had not to admit that their guitars did not really sound better than cheaper copies, they simply could argue this was because of their US pick-ups.

The beautiful light fiesta red (which does not really equal the original fiesta from the early 60ies, it has a tendency towards orange) was not available when the series was launched, it was introduced about 1983, together with black and white. Before there was only sunburst (2-tone for the ’57, 3-tone for the ’62).

This guitar is the ’57 model. The differences to the ’62 model are: one-piece maple neck (’62 has rosewood fingerboard) , white one-layer pickguard with 8 screws (’62: three-layers, 11 screws), no pocket shoulder in control cavity (this is for one of the additional screws of the ’62).

The body wood is probably  basswood (earlier models had ash elder). Basswood is not original Fender vintage style but has nevertheless good acoustic properties. The sound of this particular guitar is great, it has that slightly nasal twang but sounds very warm. It is very light but resonates well.

If you are interested in more detail info about these JV Squier guitars, the best source for it are the Squier JV Pages.

Mark Knopfler never owned one of these, however he played the same model as this one in a German TV show called Bananas in the 80ies when they filmed a clip of So Far Away.

Guitars, Mark Knopfler gear, Vintage guitars

Japanese Vintage guitars – the situation in the late 70ies /early 80ies

When I started playing the guitar in 1979 (after hearing a certain Mark Knopfler playing Sultans of Swing) I wanted a Strat of course. At that time Fender made exactly one model – the “Stratocaster”, no Deluxe, Standard, Hot Rod, Super, Extra, and the like – only and simply the “Stratocaster”.
On the other hand you had Japanese copies by a zillion of manufacturers it seems. At that time nobody knew that there were actually only a few Japanese companies who produced them and that they were marketed under many different names here in Germany or in the rest of the world.

My first Strat was a 2nd-hand Fender Stratocaster from 1976 in sunburst with a black pickguard and white knobs. It was very heavy but looked pretty much like Mark Knopfler’s guitar – well, it was a real Strat – and differed only in details like the bigger headstock or the bigger Fender decal.

Prices for a new Fender were about 900 – 1200,- DM (would be 450 – 600 €), while the Japanese copies were about 175 – 350 €.

My first Japanese Strat was a Tokai: I was in a guitar shop and there was this fiesta red Strat (you never saw a red guitar because Fender had discontinued all red colours in the late 60ies !!), it even had a small headstock like an early 60ies Strat (this was a sensation, all Strats and all copies had the big head), and it was feather light, played and sounded really cool. Even the decal with the Tokai logo looked like a Fender script logo! It was the perfect 1:1 copy of a ’64 Strat. Fortunately this was shortly before Christmas so I got this guitar (which cost the equivalent of 420,- €) for Christmas. It became my number one Strat then and sounded much better than my Fender.

Soon after Fender reacted to these high-quality copies of vintage Strats in two different ways: a) they copied the ’57 and ’62 Strat themselves (the birth of the “Vintage Stratocaster” model) and b) they made a deal with the Fujigen Gakki company (who built e.g. Ibanez and Greco guitars) to produce a Japanese version of the vintage Strats for Fender. These were marketed under the name “Squier”.

Both appeared about the same time in the shops here in Germany. I remember that we all were surprised that the Japanese Squier guitars did not sound inferior to the US versions, in the contrary, in many cases I liked them better. The first Squiers were available in three-tone sunburst (’62 model with rosewood fingerboard) and two-tone sunburst (’57 model with maple neck), but a few months later they were available in white, black and fiesta red as well.

The fiesta red was too light and rather orange compared with the original, but it looked great! I bought a ’57 Squier Strat in fiesta red in 1983 which I will feature in one of the next articles.

Mark Knopfler himself also got one of these Japanese vintage copies: a blue Fernandes Strat which he used for some stuff around the time of Love over Gold. John Suhr said that this guitar was one of the best-sounding guitars Mark had.

Fender took legal actions against these copies and won, so about 1984 the period of ultra-close copying came to an end. In the last years prices for these guitars have gone up more and more, but with prices about 500 – 1000,- € they are still affordable. There are more and more websites dedicated to these Japanese vintage guitars, a sure sign that they are becoming cult guitars themselves. If you want a real 30ys old vintage guitar, look out for the Japanese Greco (“super real” series), Tokai (“springy sound”), Squier JV (JV for Japanes vintage, later Squiers came from Korea or other Asian countries), or Fernandes. I am sure it is not only a good investment but also a good chance to get a perfect sounding guitar.

Guitar in general, Misc

How to avoid RSI, carpal tunnel syndrome, wrist pain etc. when playing guitar extensively (part 1)

RSI – the nightmare of musicians, even a Mark Knopfler got RSI problems on a tour a few years ago.

RSI is a relatively new expression for a relatively new kind of health problem. RSI stands for ‘repetetive strain injury’, which means “any of a loose group of conditions resulting from overuse of a tool, such as a computer keyboard or musical instrument or other activity that requires repeated movements. It is a syndrome that affects muscles, tendons and nerves in the hands, arms and upper back.” (from Wikipedia)

Repeated movements are nothing really new, I guess a smith did repeated movements quite a lot when hammering on a piece of steel, even hundreds of years ago. I think the reason why a smith can do so without big trouble is that these movements require a lot of strength which comes from groups of rather big muscles. Muscles can be trained, and in a way they like it to work because this is what they were made for.

What however seems new to me are repeated movements that don’t require much force but a rather subtle control of small muscles. A good example might be clicking your computer mouse. Have you ever asked yourself how many clicks you might do when working or playing on the computer for some hours? Clicking once in a few seconds seems realistic to me, so let’s say there are maybe 6 clicks a minute, which means 360 per hour, or maybe about 1,500 when you spend some hours on a late night computer session (and we haven’t even talked about double-clicks yet).

And here exactly is the problem, going 1,500 steps is probably no problem for man, but our body is not designed to move one single finger a few thousand times within a short time.

What exactly happens to our body when overusing single muscles? Since muscles can only do one particular action, which is to contract (they cannot ‘push’, for these opposite movements we have a coresponding  antagonist muscle), overuse results in a contracted muscle state, in other words, the muscle does not relax to its full length after the job but remains slightly contracted – or cramped, a bit shorter than it was before. This contraction disturbs the balance of different muscles, and as our body is an ultra-complex system which means everything works together in some way, other parts of the body can become effected as a consequence, e.g. a contracted muscle causes a higher tension on the tendons, and this leads to a higher friction which results in a possible inflammation, and so on.

Nevertheless, there are people who work on the PC or play guitar all day without getting these problems, while others do.

And this is my message: there is hope – it is not an unavoidable problem, even if you decide to do nothing  but playing guitar all day long. I am convinced that the real problem is not the repetetive movement itself, but the way we use our body and our mind ( !! ) while doing these movements. More details and what this means exactly will be covered in one (or more) of the next article(s), also what to do for prevention or as a therapy to recover. Stay tuned.

Guitars, Mark Knopfler gear, Vintage guitars

Detail pictures of 1936 National Style-0

One of Mark Knopfler’s most famous guitars is surely his National Style-O (read “style – oh”). This is the guitar on the cover of Brothers in Arms.

AFAIK he bought this guitar from his buddy Steve Phillips long before Dire Straits, it was his second National (the first was a Tricone from the late 20ies which he bought from an old man in Wales).

What makes a National unique is not only the metal body but the resonator – something like a mechanical loudspeaker so to say. The first National appeared in the 1920ies, at a time long before electric amplifiers were used for guitars. The resonator increases the volume of the guitar so that it was ideal for street musicians or everyone who had to compete with other instruments in a band. More general info on resonator guitars be found in the Wikipedia article.

In this post I want to present some detail photos of a National, a 1936 model that is very similar to Mark Knopfler’s – which seems to be probably from about 1937 to me.

This guitar sounds fantastic. I had a metal Dobro guitar which I bought in the late 80ies, thinking that all metal resonator guitars should sound pretty much identical (and there was only Dobro who produced them at that time). When I first heard this guitar however, I immediately decided to sell the Dobro because it sounded miles away from this one.

The body is brass (some other Nationals like the Duolians were steel), and the neck might be mahogany (not sure). The neck is extremely fat. It has a V-shape with such a depth that many capos (e.g. my favourite the Shubb capo) do not open wide enough to be used here.

The fingerboard is slightly curved what I prefer over the flat ones that were common a few years before.

But now enjoy the slide show with a lot of pictures. I will report about some other details of this guitar (including pictures of the interior) in a future article.

1936 National Style-O