Originally Posted by: ianroxA little intimidated here. I'm 54 and have been playing for about seven months but was born to play guitar. I bought a Squire Strat and a little Fender Mustang 1 amp. My focus is on a Mark Knopfler tone. Can any of you help me find it either in what I already have or tell me what I need so I can set some gear goals. I have my eye on the MK Fender signature series but I also read that he loved the Schecter. Any help would be great.
Hi there...don't be intimidated...we don't bite...well the instructors might...:D
To be honest with Mark's tone and gear it's like which year...which album...which song...!!! He has used so many set ups over the years...Guitars range from the strat to the Les Paul to Surhs and Schecters...
As far as amps goes he used 100w Soldano heads for quite a while...As far as I know he is using hand built amps from a guy here in the uk at the moment...I can't remember the guys name now but I was on his website a while ago looking at the amps he designed for Mark...
I've been on the fender site and looked at your amp and I see it has 24 amp models...I can't find a list of what they are though...Mark uses very clean amps though so I would steer away from Marshalls...
From doing a bit of research I found the only effects he really uses are compression delay and reverb.
Sorry to say that buying the MK strat will not give you the MK tone...it's only one small part of the picture...but what it will do is give you a much much better tone than you have right now...!!!
The amount of gear he has used over the years makes creating a tone a bit difficult...If you want to get a tone like the lead in Brothers in arms then you would need the Les Paul...but if you want a tone for say Sultans Of Swing then you would need the Strat...
I would say if you try one of the Fender models...I would go for the 65 Twin reverb if you have it...Dial in some compression...add some reverb and see if you like the sound...whatever gear you have it will be hard to get the tone exactly right but as long as it sounds good to you then you should be ok...
Sorry if I've overloaded you with info and made you even more confused...!!!
