This site is on Facebook now: check it out here. From now on you can follow interesting news there as well, or simply let the world know that you like this site 🙂 I admit I am still rather new in the world of Facebook, and probably do not fully understand all possibilities and options of Facebook yet, but I am sure that good ideas will come after a start […]
Visitors of Mark Knopfler’s latest Get Lucky tour might have wondered about one of Knopfler’s new guitars which he used on stage for the last song each night – Piper to the End. This song features (live and studio) the Electrajet built by Luthier Don Grosh. Don Grosh started his company Grosh Guitars in 1993, “with the singular goal of producing the world’s finest custom electric guitars and basses” (quote […]
Over the last days I was working on a Strat project. I had some parts from a 70ies Japanese Strat copy, which together with an American Fender neck and a loaded pickguard should make a nice part-o-caster. In the seventies many guitars were finished with polyester. This finish is like a coat of hard plastic (actually it is rather a resin). It is easy to apply because you can sand […]
Most people who like Mark Knopfler might know Chris Rea, who has been popular especially here in Europe since the 80ies. Due to health problems, he ended his active career some yeasr ago. I first heard of him in 1983 when a friend of mine who was also into Dire Straits at that time told me about a concert he was at with the then super-group SAGA. It seemed he […]
There are countless ways to record an electric guitar. While some of these do not really work for distorted guitars, you have even more choices when you want to record a clean guitar: you can plug it directly into the mixing desk, or use a DI-box before. Then there are special recording solutions like digital or analog pre-amps that also emulate the influence of the guitar speaker or even the […]
In the first article on this subject I explained what RSI is and where it results from. This second article should focus on what you can do to overcome it in case you already have problems. Since I am not a medical doctor and do neither work in this field, I might not be competent to write about such a complex thing. For this reason everything I recommend must be […]
In May 1979 Mark Knopfler and Dire Straits drummer Pick Withers were invited to play on Bob Dylan’s new album, Slow Train Coming. This was not the first session Mark Knopfler was asked to play on (he already played on the Steely Dan song Time out of Mind and with Mavis Staple before), but it was the first session for a complete album. The idea came from Barry Becket and […]
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 […]
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. […]
(At the end of this article you will find a matching video for all who prefer watching to reading) An acoustic guitar has normally heavier strings than an electric guitar because you want a loud and rich sound. With an electric guitar you don’t need that much volume because you can adjust the sound easily with the amp. Consequently playing the acoustic requires more strength and finger pressure, and some […]