Mark Knopfler Guitar / More Knowledge about the guitar

Nice: Fender online guitar tuner

Ingo — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 19:23:23 +0000

Today I was on the Fender website and accidentally found a nice little tool there: the online guitar tuner. When you click on one of the six tuners of the peghead, the software will play a sample of the corresponding note, played with a clean Fender sound. There are some very useful options: loop on or off [...]

How to identify an original pre-CBS Fender Stratocaster body

Ingo — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 21:08:26 +0000

I often read threads in forums about how to check if a certain part on a Fender vintage guitar is original or not. Of course there are countless books and websites which show many details that help to do so. However, there is one particular detail which is only rarely mentioned: the ‘dowel holes‘ on [...]

New Forum on this site

Ingo — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:53:09 +0000

As many of you might already have noticed, I recently added a forum to this site. We have the comment function below each blog post which has been used to discuss everything that is related to the post subject, but many times completely new threads emerged within the comments which became easily off-topic in a way. [...]

Features and specs of a ‘61 Vintage Stratocaster

Ingo — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:09:30 +0000

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 [...]

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

Ingo — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 09:24:35 +0000

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 [...]

Rare video of Brendan Crocker gig featuring Mark Knopfler

Ingo — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 15:46:52 +0000

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 [...]

Rasgueado and other flamenco techniques in Sultans of Swing

Ingo — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 14:41:35 +0000

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 [...]

Rhett Davies and the sound of the first Dire Straits album

Ingo — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 18:45:42 +0000

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 [...]

Why not become an author for this blog?

Ingo — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 09:20:12 +0000

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. [...]

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

Ingo — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 16:27:28 +0000

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 [...]