This is thought to be a 1962 (base model) though there are plenty of suggestions bits were added from a Japanese Fender Strat at various times. Knopfler also acquired a second red Strat with an all-maple neck.
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But they are the same guitar: Knopfler had his favourite Strat refinished in late ’78 in a colour a lot brighter than Fender’s stock Fiesta Red. You can see this bare wood rosewood board Strat in early DS footage and also a bright red Strat with a rosewood board. Note that in the 1990s, Knopfler would go back to original Fender pickups. It came with its original Fender pickups, replaced by Knopfler with DiMarzio FS-1.
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He bought his second-hand 1961/’62 Strat around 1977, in a stripped-back condition (the alder body was bare timber). I don’t know whether I slept with it, but it wasn’t far off! So that’s where Gibson started in my life, and that guitar will always have a special place in my heart.”īut by the time of Dire Straits debuting properly, Knopfler had a 1961/’62 Fender Stratocaster which would became his main guitar of the first four Dire Straits albums… and his early signature sound. My friend Steve Phillips and I painstakingly stripped it and got it back to its original cherry finish, and it was everything to me. I used to play a Gibson Les Paul Special with a pick. “I just had this 30-watt amplifier we used to stick it up on two wooden chairs. “We played in pubs in London,” Knopfler later remembered. READ MORE: From Les Paul to Rob Chapman – The history of signature guitars.He played a second-hand £80 double-cutaway Les Paul Special in early band Café Racers, and it’s also on the Dire Straits début album of 1978. It may have seemed odd when Knopfler – for so long associated with Fenders – became a signature Gibson artist in 2016, but he bought his first Gibson circa 1971, when he was 22. Image: Greetsia Tent / WireImage Knopfler’s early Gibsons and Fenders…. Playing with your fingers has something to do with immediacy and soul…” As I was flying around this guitar, I realised I was doing things with my fingers that I could do with a pick and also some other things that I wouldn’t be able to do with a pick. You couldn’t really strum or bash it, so I had to fingerpick. It was like playing an electric guitar, but there was a little bit of sound to it. They had a cheap imitation of a Gibson Dove acoustic with unbelievably light strings. “I was sleeping on the floor in somebody’s apartment. This is all shit! You should have enough reverence for music to make your own education.” “I don’t care how many jazz lessons you’ve taken, I don’t care how many modal dingbats you know. It interferes with what you do and has no redeeming features at all.” It means I can buy 1959 Gibson Les Pauls and Triumph motorcycles. We’ll try and summarise here… In his own words…
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Even if his core sound is unmistakeable, he’s played a vast array of top-class new and vintage guitars over the years, which often change from album to album. With a career now into its sixth decade, Knopfler has sold over 120 million albums and can still sell-out Madison Square Garden at the age of 70 (2019). You won’t likely to be able to play exactly like him.
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With one of the most recognisable sounds in the history of modern guitar, Mark Knopfler is the sort of player that it’s sometimes best to just sit back and enjoy.