To those hearing a modulation/chorus effect on my recording, I can only assume that it's some sort of unwanted by-product of the fairly drastic equalisation applied in an attempt and replicate the unique EQ curve/phasing qualities the original guitar track has. As I say at 7:40, I don't really feel that I got particularly close to 'nailing it' but that's part of the fun. If Mark and Neil Dorfsman couldn't do it a fortnight later, what hope have I got? 😉
I don't care what it is Chris. It's just great playing. You are simply the most motivating guitar player I've come across since the first time I heard Crossfire by SRV in 1990. I've already started picking up some of your tricks. And I quit playing for almost 20 yrs , when I was about 21 or so. Then about 2 yra ago , picked up a Yamaha acoustic, then just this fall , a fender ultra tele. And my favorite thing to do is play to some of you're backing tracks. And listen to Friday fret works back catalog. You are on pair with anyone who has ever played the axe. Please give us a full album of you doing you.
Hey Chris I was wondering if you could do a video on Clapton’s White Room guitar tone, I really love how well it cuts through but I don’t know how to replicate it.
Sounds pretty damn good. I'm not sure if you've messed around with it much, but if you have a Kemper, you should try messing around in the cab section. The high shift and low shift features allow you to dial in a very boxy sound that is very much like the out of phase sound you're looking for. It's great for lo-fi tones! Happy new year! =D
At the time, a lot of us considered his tone for that song "sarcastic." It felt -- knowing Mark's general tone -- that he was goofing on the metal guitar tones that had made it to pop radio (Van Halen, Quiet Riot, Ratt, etc.)
I believe Knopfler was quoted as saying that he wanted to mimic the Billy Gibbons guitar tone. I tend to agree with you that Knopfler had a somewhat sarcastic feeling in mind. It syncs with the lyrics that are sarcastically speaking for a couple of meatheads in a Best Buy type of store as one of them gives a simple-minded take on how rock stars make it big with little effort.
@@MaximilianMengwasser True, especially live, but he changed the positions up more on the album recordings. He seems to have used the other positions a lot more on the first two albums (after which he stopped using Fenders a lot anyway). Eg: Single Handed Sailor - neck, News - neck+middle, In the Gallery - middle, Setting me Up - bridge. Sultans is arguably the middle pickup alone, as it never sounds live like it does on the album (In fact I believe Chris has a video where he mentions that too), but one of his two Strats also had an apparently non-fender pickup (it had different polepieces) which he moved to different positions between tours, and which gave a much thicker sound, making it harder to tell.
“Close enough for Jazz” Chris - besides my first guitar instructor and myself... you’re the first person I can remember using that phrase. I remember my instructor (who had decades of experience as a pro-player) tuning his guitar, shrugging and then saying it pff-handed. It may be common in some circles, but not around me. So many don’t ‘get it’. Bravo.
KNOPFLER is by far my favorite guitar player, great to see him been remembered! Most of my playing comes from MK and SRV influences. I didn't think it sounded close to the original, but even mark can't recreate that anymore. Cheers and hope you bring more stuff from MK, he is amazingly brilhant!!!
The days of imperfect music resulting in perfect recordings has passed. Now producers and engineers massage the tracks and fiddle with tempo and pitch and drum clicks until all of the lovely human magic-of-imperfection has been boiled out of the music. Thank goodness we have pro musicians like Chris Buck to get us back to reality, back to the days before the music really died at the hands of computer enhanced no-nothings. Keep the music coming, and thanks for your videos.
It was a Burman amp made by a guy local to Mark in the North East. It was the first piece of of kit Mark purchased when he has some money from the first album. Also from memory, those Morley wah pedals are "passive 'which really does make them rather unique. They were big as well really big for a foot pedal.
I've only got back into making music in the last 5 or 6 years, and about four years ago I realised I needed to re-buy a wah-wah pedal (you're not a true guitarist unless you've bought a wah-wah, sold it, and then bought another one). I did an in-store shootout of four different wahs, but the Morley was the clear winner for me. And relatively inexpensive. Glad to hear that Mark used it in this song.
Such an iconic track and very symbolic to my 13 year old self purchasing his first CD in ‘85. Great video as always and an amazing channel.... full stop. Thanks Chris!
Great job on the research, presentation and execution of this Chris. One of my all time favourite songs! Goes to show how every detail on that recording of Brothers in Arms was an artistic decision. By the way, I'm glad that you nailed the harmonic note in the middle bit. Knopfler himself didn't recreate that in his live version for "On The Night" and I was always disappointed in that. Mind you, it also didn't have the whole drum solo build up either...
Something to bear in mind, as far as the Morley wah pedals are concerned, is that most of their models, and certainly at the time, used an optically modulated op-amp based swept filter. No inductors involved. This produces a very clean and symmetrical filter peak. The classic VOX wah uses a tuned inductor / capacitor to produce filtering. The sweep is produced through the Milller effect and changing the Miller feedback through mechanically rotating a pot. The VOX circuit tends to introduce a lot of distortion of its own and the filter peak shape is far from consistent. Towards the low end it even introduces multiple peaks. So which wah circuit type was used could play a part.
It may be the UA-cam compression, but it sounds to me like you got it closer than just for Jazz. Way to kick off a new year! Hope yours is a great one.
Happy New Year Chris! You definitely nailed the tone. I always assumed that Mark had used his '58 for this track. Thanks for correcting my misconception. Cheers!
I learned to play that riff in 85 for a band I played in and I used a Takamine GZ 300 w buckers and a Traynor G100 bloc amp with the EQ bypass on and a TS 808 , It got pretty close at the time. Interesting to see that it was a cry baby that contributed to the tone. Fun facts, Happy New Year Chris.
Knopfler recorded Money for Nothing and the entire Brothers in Arms album on a Telecaster bridge pickup and a Gorilla amp. That's how he was able to get those great tones. If you don't believe me, then just grab a Tele and a Gorilla amp and lock yourself in a room, no food, water or bathroom breaks, until you hear those great Knopfler tones. It works every time... or it gets the hose. It's also a great way to start idiotic internet rumors which a certain percentage of people will believe and try to emulate.
@@DMSProduktions I suppose. I'd like to create something more durable, though. Something that would be worthy of inane internet debate for years to come. Something that will be found in scholarly tomes long after I'm gone. Like how Elvis was a trans man, who was born "Elvira Annabel Presley", and is currently living under that name after changing her mind in 1977 and transitioning back. Things worthy of an in-depth Netflix mini docu-series. ...things like that.
Hi, Chris. I've been very curious about this tone for ages, and recreated it pretty closely with different gear. My experience is, that most probably it was a slab body single cut jr. or special with only the bridge p90 working. And most probably it was a treble booster with Laney Supergroup, which is basically very much a Lead model Marshall. In my experience, 95% of the elusive thing is that there was no wah working in the studio. Instead, the 0.02uF tone cap rolled off to zero (low pass filter), combined with all lows cut by the pedal (high pass filter), created a honky band pass thing similar to wah, but it definitely wasn't a wah. Wah came in, when Knopfler tried to recreate the shtick for live usage. But his live wah tone for this song was always narrower and screechier, than the record. And yours here is kinda like that, too. The remaining 5% is that humbuckers and maple tops, although working for this sound, make it a little less like the record. Even my Tele special, with its 9.5k texas special in the bridge and 0.02uF tone cap rolled to zero, sounds and, more importantly, reacts closer, then humbuckers. But mahogany slab with p90 in the bridge would be closer. P.S. And of course, paralleling the two pickups, espesially out of phase, won't do the trick.
I seriously just dusted off my Digitech RP1000 this past week, programmed a preset with a BluesBreaker sound, added a fuzz, and accidentally stumbled across this sound while noodling. I have been noodling away all week! What a coincidence for this video!
I'm listening on a sony TV and it sounded like you really nailed it to me. I'm sure with head phones I might tell the difference though. But one thing to mention is that humidity can play a part in tone. Denser air slows down sound and effects different frequencies at different rates. This is one factor that makes it near impossible to 100% replicate a guitar tone. Even if they had left that room set up exactly the same with all the same gear, if the humidity was way different the tone would be different also.
The out of phase middle position on the Gibson les Paul wasent in the actuall guitar it was the microphone position on the Marshall 4x12 cabinet in the studio. That’s the phasing sound that you cannot recreate. His les Paul was a Gibson 1983 59’ pre historic reissue in Cherry Sunburst with both 59’ style pickups in the actual guitar. So that’s the out of phase sound and the money for nothing guitar you hear is that 59’ reissue les Paul :).
I think that chasing that tone is Like chasing gilmour tone on another brick in the wall part 2 solo-my opinion is that they experimented a lot in studio and by luck and top engineering knowledge they came to specific tone- and that is Way is so hard to recreate it 100%. Sometimes you need a good combo of Guitar playing, engineering and a luck😃. But your tone is excellent. Keep on giving us this videospot-they Are gold. Thx
The Brick 2 tone is way easier to get than M4N IMHO, a p90 neck pickup clean will get you really close straight away. They did some weird processing tricks on the record (Gilmour played straight into the desk, then they ran that signal through a VOX amp and possibly mixed the two for the finished version), but a Gibson neck p90 will get you 90% there instantly.
the Les Paul he recorded that song with was an early 80's Prehistoric model 59 re-issue. It was sold at auction for a remarkable fortune!!!!!! not a P-90 pickup...... I can definitely hear that modulation and it definitely effects the outcome.
I think you did nail that as close as it can be nailed! But oh hell that Gold Top!!!!! Bucket list for sure but I bet the bucket comes first! Thank for the video......
Thanks Chris. I’m currently on a Dire Straits kick at the moment so this was perfectly timed. The tone on ‘so far away’ is also pretty unique and iconic...maybe another vid??
It’d be hard to recreate. The guitar used was custom built by John Suhr to be used in conjunction with a Syncliever Synthesizer. At the time they cost about $300,000. It’s not just chorus and flanger which everyone thinks! Great sound though.
@@john_pryce9855 You're right ! actually, you can get pretty close with a BF2 boss flanger and the right settings, but you won't be able to get the perfect emulation...
@@YannGUTTER yes, but I’ve found the decay of the sound is very hard to nail. It has a slight mix of the guitar pickup sound too, but much less than you get with just a normal pedal setup so it’s really hard! I saw a real Syncliever in a museum in SA. Frank Zappa also had one I think?
Chris, I have tried to nail this tone for years and got somewhere near. I can definitely hear a chorusing effect on your recording. Also I don’t think the original has any reverb. Listen to the very short silent parts. He seems to have had a lot of sustain possibly created by a compressor but no reverb. Anyway you got pretty close. Keep them coming thanks.
Yeah, I’d like to hear how the P90s would have sounded with the tone pot rolled off. I felt like it was a bit too hot of a tone as compared to the humbuckers, but perhaps rolling back the tone could have helped find the sweet spot.
@@joshrocha2500, I don't like the out of phase P90s here in Chris video. To me, my RS502, sounds more like the real thing (just in phase, parallel P90s).
I saw the brothers in arms concert live in Los Angeles. All I remember seeing him play that night was a strat. But, then again, it was 1985. :) It ranks in the top 5 of my alltime favorite concerts.
@@HarmFlo "if you really lived the '80s, you don't remember it". Here's the date & the set list: 9-9-85. www.setlist.fm/setlist/dire-straits/1985/greek-theatre-los-angeles-ca-2bdc2036.html It was a great summer! This concert was followed by Springsteen. www.setlist.fm/setlist/bruce-springsteen/1985/los-angeles-memorial-coliseum-los-angeles-ca-53d7b355.html
@@arrows1440 That's awesome. I was born too late. As for the guitar, Knopfler's mainly used Les Pauls live for MFN, but occasionally his Pensa as far as I know. The latter being easily confused with a Strat.
A few years ago I bought an unbranded Telecaster & an older style Zoom pedal from a hock shop. I plugged them in with some of my other gear to see what I had got. I used a factory set distortion on the zoom, mild reverb & my Vox wah. I left the wah set to a single point too & got a very close sound to Money for nothing. I"m still able to recreate the sound now with all this old gear & some unknown brand Tele whit just the 2 single coils. This was also just an accident on my part too. I think a lot of this sound is the wah set about midway ish. I also did this with my Les Paul & got a great sound. Cheers Y'All.
The way I do it is to roll the tone off the bridge pickup completely (either play in the treble position or with a blend of the neck pickup too) and blast the mids on the amp. Either a maxed out OD or a light fuzz to cover up the distortion part. After that the cocked wah is almost overkill if you get the frequency you need before even resorting to that.
Playing live back in the day I used to use a les paul in middle position with the bridge pickup tone rolled off to zero. It quickly gets you that cocked wah effect on the fly without searching for the ideal position on a wah pedal.
I think the closest is to go on the bridge pickup, with tone rolled off, and to add the wha, with a little bit of search for the right spot. Or maybe to use my Amplitube 4 preset I've used here : ua-cam.com/video/S1UkvllZXkI/v-deo.html 😉
Good job Chris 👌👏👏 You definitely came close enough. I just wish you´d play some more, so we could enjoy that great tone for more than a few seconds :) I used to try and find the guitar tones from ZZ-Top, in the "Eliminator/Afterburner/Recycler-Era" but it´s just impossible with the synth/computer stuff they used.. Guess "close enough" is a great goal in it self :)
I think Knopfler 'misremembers' when he talks about the wah thing. That's obviously how they recreated the tone, but when I did a cover of MFN on my channel I used an out of phase mic setup instead, and I've gotta say it sounds and feels pretty close to the original,,, no wah's allowed. Happy New Year my friend 🙂 P.S. Now do the second guitar tone from Industrial Disease,,, what on earth is that ?! lol
A lot of great nerdy info in this vid. When it comes to your final tone I think you should have much less chorus, add a little low mid on the eq and maybe add a slight short ambience reverb to get that ‘room’ feeling the original has.
Hi Chris! I really would appreciate if you brought more songs and licks from Dire straits and Mark Knopfler. It really suits well in your playing and its always a pleasure to hear a masterpiece played by a great musician.
Maybe the first guitar player that stopped me in my tracks and maybe me say 'whoa.......that is something fresh' was Mark Knopfler and that was upon hearing 'Sultans' The second time it happened was hearing Chris Buck. I think the 'Brother in Arms' album is a masterpiece, but ironically 'money for nothing' is my least favorite DS song. The gem on that record is the title track. Fantastic.......everything a that makes a great song.
I really liked this and the while my guitar gentle weeps tone. The ADT was bang on, I thought it was a leslie but trying leslie pedals it wasn't right. There is only one pedal that can do the ADT and that's the keely 30ms. Having so much fun with the keely on my Marshall BB.
@@deargdoom8743, No need to be sorry. I said, it was "the closest I've ever heard anyone get to the tone on the album", so unless I heard someone get closer it's not a debatable point. BTW, most people don't even get in the same galaxy when it comes to that sound, much less the same orbit.
To those hearing a modulation/chorus effect on my recording, I can only assume that it's some sort of unwanted by-product of the fairly drastic equalisation applied in an attempt and replicate the unique EQ curve/phasing qualities the original guitar track has. As I say at 7:40, I don't really feel that I got particularly close to 'nailing it' but that's part of the fun. If Mark and Neil Dorfsman couldn't do it a fortnight later, what hope have I got? 😉
I don't care what it is Chris. It's just great playing. You are simply the most motivating guitar player I've come across since the first time I heard Crossfire by SRV in 1990. I've already started picking up some of your tricks.
And I quit playing for almost 20 yrs , when I was about 21 or so. Then about 2 yra ago , picked up a Yamaha acoustic, then just this fall , a fender ultra tele.
And my favorite thing to do is play to some of you're backing tracks. And listen to Friday fret works back catalog.
You are on pair with anyone who has ever played the axe.
Please give us a full album of you doing you.
@@i8ittoo That's exactly what I think! Well said 👍
Hey Chris I was wondering if you could do a video on Clapton’s White Room guitar tone, I really love how well it cuts through but I don’t know how to replicate it.
Sounds pretty damn good. I'm not sure if you've messed around with it much, but if you have a Kemper, you should try messing around in the cab section. The high shift and low shift features allow you to dial in a very boxy sound that is very much like the out of phase sound you're looking for. It's great for lo-fi tones! Happy new year! =D
Aye, I was going to say you're a wee bit too chorussy there. Fair enough then!
Missed opportuniy: This video should have been titled "That's the way you do it". Happy 2021 everybody!
My personal Holy Grail Knopfler tone is the solo tone on Sultans of Swing. Good grief that's some of the most powerful clean tone of all time.
Paired with genius playing
It is a spectacular, understated thing. And to get that tone right out of the box on his first real recording. Just amazing.
At the time, a lot of us considered his tone for that song "sarcastic." It felt -- knowing Mark's general tone -- that he was goofing on the metal guitar tones that had made it to pop radio (Van Halen, Quiet Riot, Ratt, etc.)
Yess.. that makes sense. Wow! Thanks for that.
Mark apparently deliberately wanted to ape Billy Gibbons' guitar tone for the track.
I believe Knopfler was quoted as saying that he wanted to mimic the Billy Gibbons guitar tone. I tend to agree with you that Knopfler had a somewhat sarcastic feeling in mind. It syncs with the lyrics that are sarcastically speaking for a couple of meatheads in a Best Buy type of store as one of them gives a simple-minded take on how rock stars make it big with little effort.
I always loved the way he used the middle pickup on a strat.
I saw him play it on a strat back in the day.
Knopfler played the second Position on his Strat (Bridge + Middle) most of the time.
@@MaximilianMengwasser True, especially live, but he changed the positions up more on the album recordings. He seems to have used the other positions a lot more on the first two albums (after which he stopped using Fenders a lot anyway). Eg: Single Handed Sailor - neck, News - neck+middle, In the Gallery - middle, Setting me Up - bridge. Sultans is arguably the middle pickup alone, as it never sounds live like it does on the album (In fact I believe Chris has a video where he mentions that too), but one of his two Strats also had an apparently non-fender pickup (it had different polepieces) which he moved to different positions between tours, and which gave a much thicker sound, making it harder to tell.
Fantastic research and brilliant execution. These mini documentaries are superb.
I have a feeling Chris really enjoyed making this video. It’s interesting how such an iconic lick on an iconic song is so shrouded in mystery.
“Close enough for Jazz”
Chris - besides my first guitar instructor and myself... you’re the first person I can remember using that phrase.
I remember my instructor (who had decades of experience as a pro-player) tuning his guitar, shrugging and then saying it pff-handed.
It may be common in some circles, but not around me. So many don’t ‘get it’.
Bravo.
Chris Buck, Tone Detective! There's a Netflix series in there somewhere!
Clearly played on a Kay acoustic plugged into his dad's stereo
.
You too, huh? 🙄
.
Well its like that. Sounds like a wah halfway - sounds like a thick single or a HB - it's overdriven - so at that point it can be anything
Hmm, it sounded to me like one of Seasick Steve's cast off one string diddley bows that needed a string.
Damn. Shades of my Ventura acoustic electric plugged into my Magnavox turntable/amp/10" speakers.
His Dad's Sanyo Music Centre to be precise
I cannot believe this. I was literally wondering about this yesterday!
Same here !
KNOPFLER is by far my favorite guitar player, great to see him been remembered! Most of my playing comes from MK and SRV influences.
I didn't think it sounded close to the original, but even mark can't recreate that anymore.
Cheers and hope you bring more stuff from MK, he is amazingly brilhant!!!
The days of imperfect music resulting in perfect recordings has passed. Now producers and engineers massage the tracks and fiddle with tempo and pitch and drum clicks until all of the lovely human magic-of-imperfection has been boiled out of the music. Thank goodness we have pro musicians like Chris Buck to get us back to reality, back to the days before the music really died at the hands of computer enhanced no-nothings. Keep the music coming, and thanks for your videos.
Except for all the musicians who don't do that.
Thank you for taking the time to make and post this excellent review video on that *unique* guitar sound of *Mark Knopfler* on *Money for Nothing♪♫♪*
It was a Burman amp made by a guy local to Mark in the North East. It was the first piece of of kit Mark purchased when he has some money from the first album. Also from memory, those Morley wah pedals are "passive 'which really does make them rather unique. They were big as well really big for a foot pedal.
Love these type of videos Chris. You nailed it.
I've only got back into making music in the last 5 or 6 years, and about four years ago I realised I needed to re-buy a wah-wah pedal (you're not a true guitarist unless you've bought a wah-wah, sold it, and then bought another one). I did an in-store shootout of four different wahs, but the Morley was the clear winner for me. And relatively inexpensive. Glad to hear that Mark used it in this song.
Such an iconic track and very symbolic to my 13 year old self purchasing his first CD in ‘85. Great video as always and an amazing channel.... full stop. Thanks Chris!
Nailed it! Bringing in the new year with style.
Great job on the research, presentation and execution of this Chris. One of my all time favourite songs! Goes to show how every detail on that recording of Brothers in Arms was an artistic decision. By the way, I'm glad that you nailed the harmonic note in the middle bit. Knopfler himself didn't recreate that in his live version for "On The Night" and I was always disappointed in that. Mind you, it also didn't have the whole drum solo build up either...
Excellent as always. Happy New Year to you and your family Chris 👍
Something to bear in mind, as far as the Morley wah pedals are concerned, is that most of their models, and certainly at the time, used an optically modulated op-amp based swept filter. No inductors involved. This produces a very clean and symmetrical filter peak. The classic VOX wah uses a tuned inductor / capacitor to produce filtering. The sweep is produced through the Milller effect and changing the Miller feedback through mechanically rotating a pot. The VOX circuit tends to introduce a lot of distortion of its own and the filter peak shape is far from consistent. Towards the low end it even introduces multiple peaks. So which wah circuit type was used could play a part.
Whooh, Chris. Big success in my humble opinion! I also loved the single-coil version. Sounded really crisp and metallic. :)
Happy New Year! Fantastic guitar tone! Love your content and playing 😎
C'mon what a fresh new start for this year.
Awesome vid!
You nailed it to me with the LP Awesome vid & info 👍🔥🎸🦅
Superb analysis, as ever! As you said, close enough for jazz 😆
I think the big lesson here is that facts don't exist.
exactlt. I can only laugh, when people argue how was certain records made so long time ago.
+Steven Hopkins. You are dead right, facts do not exist -- and that's a fact! Oh shit. Now we're back to the beginning again.
You finally met 2020 in 2021
...what kind of dumbass logic is this? Facts do exist, objective reality exists. Pur perceptions and limitations are what makes things difficult
It may be the UA-cam compression, but it sounds to me like you got it closer than just for Jazz. Way to kick off a new year! Hope yours is a great one.
What an amazing amount of detailed information thanks!
Happy new year Chris! Youve been by far my biggest inspiration ever on guitar! Thank you for everything you do!!
Happy New Year Chris! You definitely nailed the tone. I always assumed that Mark had used his '58 for this track. Thanks for correcting my misconception. Cheers!
Well done as always Chris. Thanks for all your videos and keeping our minds in creative mode.👍
The end showing the matching tone is just the track for all but the last few seconds
Wow! You're the first person I have come across that owns an Eggle!
Good job on the detective work, I even picked it up myself through headphones.
Excellent vid.
I learned to play that riff in 85 for a band I played in and I used a Takamine GZ 300 w buckers and a Traynor G100 bloc amp with the EQ bypass on and a TS 808 , It got pretty close at the time. Interesting to see that it was a cry baby that contributed to the tone. Fun facts, Happy New Year Chris.
Awesome vid Chris! Thanks mate!!!
Knopfler recorded Money for Nothing and the entire Brothers in Arms album on a Telecaster bridge pickup and a Gorilla amp. That's how he was able to get those great tones. If you don't believe me, then just grab a Tele and a Gorilla amp and lock yourself in a room, no food, water or bathroom breaks, until you hear those great Knopfler tones.
It works every time... or it gets the hose.
It's also a great way to start idiotic internet rumors which a certain percentage of people will believe and try to emulate.
😃
You mean you create a MEME?
@@DMSProduktions I suppose. I'd like to create something more durable, though. Something that would be worthy of inane internet debate for years to come. Something that will be found in scholarly tomes long after I'm gone.
Like how Elvis was a trans man, who was born "Elvira Annabel Presley", and is currently living under that name after changing her mind in 1977 and transitioning back. Things worthy of an in-depth Netflix mini docu-series.
...things like that.
@@ravenslaves LMAO!!! Thank ya very much! Uh huh!
Great job as always, Chris. Happy New Year.
Great job as always chris 👍
You really nailed the sound. Good job.
The Boss XT-2 can get you there too. The MFN tone was an accident, the wah was cocked and they ran with that tone.
Nice work on the research. Happy new year..👍🇦🇺
Pretty convincing results if you ask me - great job Chris
Happy New Year Chris
Happy New Year Chris
Hi, Chris.
I've been very curious about this tone for ages, and recreated it pretty closely with different gear. My experience is, that most probably it was a slab body single cut jr. or special with only the bridge p90 working. And most probably it was a treble booster with Laney Supergroup, which is basically very much a Lead model Marshall.
In my experience, 95% of the elusive thing is that there was no wah working in the studio. Instead, the 0.02uF tone cap rolled off to zero (low pass filter), combined with all lows cut by the pedal (high pass filter), created a honky band pass thing similar to wah, but it definitely wasn't a wah. Wah came in, when Knopfler tried to recreate the shtick for live usage. But his live wah tone for this song was always narrower and screechier, than the record. And yours here is kinda like that, too.
The remaining 5% is that humbuckers and maple tops, although working for this sound, make it a little less like the record. Even my Tele special, with its 9.5k texas special in the bridge and 0.02uF tone cap rolled to zero, sounds and, more importantly, reacts closer, then humbuckers. But mahogany slab with p90 in the bridge would be closer.
P.S. And of course, paralleling the two pickups, espesially out of phase, won't do the trick.
Excellent work!
Great stuff. Happy new year Chris.
You got very, very close. Interesting project!
I seriously just dusted off my Digitech RP1000 this past week, programmed a preset with a BluesBreaker sound, added a fuzz, and accidentally stumbled across this sound while noodling. I have been noodling away all week! What a coincidence for this video!
I'm listening on a sony TV and it sounded like you really nailed it to me. I'm sure with head phones I might tell the difference though. But one thing to mention is that humidity can play a part in tone. Denser air slows down sound and effects different frequencies at different rates. This is one factor that makes it near impossible to 100% replicate a guitar tone. Even if they had left that room set up exactly the same with all the same gear, if the humidity was way different the tone would be different also.
Nailed it mate. Sound and playing = spot on! :)
Love me some Chris Buck. Nice!
The out of phase middle position on the Gibson les Paul wasent in the actuall guitar it was the microphone position on the Marshall 4x12 cabinet in the studio. That’s the phasing sound that you cannot recreate. His les Paul was a Gibson 1983 59’ pre historic reissue in Cherry Sunburst with both 59’ style pickups in the actual guitar. So that’s the out of phase sound and the money for nothing guitar you hear is that 59’ reissue les Paul :).
I think that chasing that tone is Like chasing gilmour tone on another brick in the wall part 2 solo-my opinion is that they experimented a lot in studio and by luck and top engineering knowledge they came to specific tone- and that is Way is so hard to recreate it 100%. Sometimes you need a good combo of Guitar playing, engineering and a luck😃. But your tone is excellent. Keep on giving us this videospot-they Are gold. Thx
The Brick 2 tone is way easier to get than M4N IMHO, a p90 neck pickup clean will get you really close straight away. They did some weird processing tricks on the record (Gilmour played straight into the desk, then they ran that signal through a VOX amp and possibly mixed the two for the finished version), but a Gibson neck p90 will get you 90% there instantly.
You nailed the tone.
the Les Paul he recorded that song with was an early 80's Prehistoric model 59 re-issue. It was sold at auction for a remarkable fortune!!!!!! not a P-90 pickup...... I can definitely hear that modulation and it definitely effects the outcome.
I think you did nail that as close as it can be nailed! But oh hell that Gold Top!!!!! Bucket list for sure but I bet the bucket comes first! Thank for the video......
This was very interesting! Well done! Thank you 🫂
Really interesting. Great video.
Great video!
when i saw them live in 1986 (i think), he used one of those headless steinberger things. he only used it for that one song.
Great information video!
Top work again Chris, keep it up, Happy New Year
Thanks, Chris. I always assumed it was dual OOP humbuckers.
Nice video. Happy New Year.
That explains why I can get a passable 'Money for nothing' tone out of my Sälen (telecaster) with the tone rolled down on the bridge pup...
Great job.
Thanks Chris.
I’m currently on a Dire Straits kick at the moment so this was perfectly timed.
The tone on ‘so far away’ is also pretty unique and iconic...maybe another vid??
It’d be hard to recreate. The guitar used was custom built by John Suhr to be used in conjunction with a Syncliever Synthesizer. At the time they cost about $300,000. It’s not just chorus and flanger which everyone thinks! Great sound though.
@@john_pryce9855 You're right ! actually, you can get pretty close with a BF2 boss flanger and the right settings, but you won't be able to get the perfect emulation...
@@YannGUTTER yes, but I’ve found the decay of the sound is very hard to nail. It has a slight mix of the guitar pickup sound too, but much less than you get with just a normal pedal setup so it’s really hard! I saw a real Syncliever in a museum in SA. Frank Zappa also had one I think?
Couldn't click fast enough!!!
Happy New Year
Mark's feeling is magnificent
Chris, I have tried to nail this tone for years and got somewhere near. I can definitely hear a chorusing effect on your recording. Also I don’t think the original has any reverb. Listen to the very short silent parts. He seems to have had a lot of sustain possibly created by a compressor but no reverb. Anyway you got pretty close. Keep them coming thanks.
I use both P90s on my Rs502 with tone rolled off. It makes a very good approach to that tone. Kinda fixed position wha and throaty dirty tone.
Cheers,
Yeah, I’d like to hear how the P90s would have sounded with the tone pot rolled off. I felt like it was a bit too hot of a tone as compared to the humbuckers, but perhaps rolling back the tone could have helped find the sweet spot.
@@joshrocha2500,
I don't like the out of phase P90s here in Chris video.
To me, my RS502, sounds more like the real thing (just in phase, parallel P90s).
Love me some Friday fretworks
I saw the brothers in arms concert live in Los Angeles. All I remember seeing him play that night was a strat. But, then again, it was 1985. :) It ranks in the top 5 of my alltime favorite concerts.
Are you sure? Brothers in Arms was released in May 1985.
@@HarmFlo "if you really lived the '80s, you don't remember it". Here's the date & the set list: 9-9-85.
www.setlist.fm/setlist/dire-straits/1985/greek-theatre-los-angeles-ca-2bdc2036.html
It was a great summer! This concert was followed by Springsteen.
www.setlist.fm/setlist/bruce-springsteen/1985/los-angeles-memorial-coliseum-los-angeles-ca-53d7b355.html
@@arrows1440 That's awesome. I was born too late. As for the guitar, Knopfler's mainly used Les Pauls live for MFN, but occasionally his Pensa as far as I know. The latter being easily confused with a Strat.
A few years ago I bought an unbranded Telecaster & an older style Zoom pedal from a hock shop. I plugged them in with some of my other gear to see what I had got. I used a factory set distortion on the zoom, mild reverb & my Vox wah. I left the wah set to a single point too & got a very close sound to Money for nothing. I"m still able to recreate the sound now with all this old gear & some unknown brand Tele whit just the 2 single coils. This was also just an accident on my part too. I think a lot of this sound is the wah set about midway ish. I also did this with my Les Paul & got a great sound. Cheers Y'All.
The zoom pedal I bought is a ZOOM 1010.
I think you nailed it !
To this day Knopfler says he's still chasing that tone and has never been able to replicate it accurately!
The way I do it is to roll the tone off the bridge pickup completely (either play in the treble position or with a blend of the neck pickup too) and blast the mids on the amp. Either a maxed out OD or a light fuzz to cover up the distortion part. After that the cocked wah is almost overkill if you get the frequency you need before even resorting to that.
Playing live back in the day I used to use a les paul in middle position with the bridge pickup tone rolled off to zero. It quickly gets you that cocked wah effect on the fly without searching for the ideal position on a wah pedal.
I think the closest is to go on the bridge pickup, with tone rolled off, and to add the wha, with a little bit of search for the right spot. Or maybe to use my Amplitube 4 preset I've used here : ua-cam.com/video/S1UkvllZXkI/v-deo.html 😉
Excellent
Good job 👏
Good job Chris 👌👏👏 You definitely came close enough. I just wish you´d play some more, so we could enjoy that great tone for more than a few seconds :) I used to try and find the guitar tones from ZZ-Top, in the "Eliminator/Afterburner/Recycler-Era" but it´s just impossible with the synth/computer stuff they used.. Guess "close enough" is a great goal in it self :)
Just checked out your band- Cardinal Black. You guys are amazing. Great video on the knopfler tone- btw
I think Knopfler 'misremembers' when he talks about the wah thing. That's obviously how they recreated the tone, but when I did a cover of MFN on my channel I used an out of phase mic setup instead, and I've gotta say it sounds and feels pretty close to the original,,, no wah's allowed. Happy New Year my friend 🙂
P.S. Now do the second guitar tone from Industrial Disease,,, what on earth is that ?! lol
Ah, I would dearly love to know how he got that tone in Industrial Disease.
I honestly think it definitely sounds closer to the humbucking tone rather than P90 to my ear
As always, a great video! Personally, I think the P90 LP sounds better, but that’s just me. What I’d really like to know what the 3 mic placement was.
A lot of great nerdy info in this vid. When it comes to your final tone I think you should have much less chorus, add a little low mid on the eq and maybe add a slight short ambience reverb to get that ‘room’ feeling the original has.
And thanks for all your brilliant content and amazing playing! 🙏
You did well here, was defo the les paul
Hi Chris! I really would appreciate if you brought more songs and licks from Dire straits and Mark Knopfler. It really suits well in your playing and its always a pleasure to hear a masterpiece played by a great musician.
Maybe the first guitar player that stopped me in my tracks and maybe me say 'whoa.......that is something fresh' was Mark Knopfler and that was upon hearing 'Sultans' The second time it happened was hearing Chris Buck. I think the 'Brother in Arms' album is a masterpiece, but ironically 'money for nothing' is my least favorite DS song. The gem on that record is the title track. Fantastic.......everything a that makes a great song.
Not sure if you've tried it, but a good Compressor dials-in the tone even better. Makes the phrasing so much more touch-sensitive.
Knopfler's clip seems to have a tad of hair on it, but you came really close! Great job!
Original track of Brothers in arms was played on a reissue Gibson made late 70s early 80. through a Marshall amp and a wah wah pedal.
This Knopfler sound reminds me a resonator guitar with overdrive
I really liked this and the while my guitar gentle weeps tone. The ADT was bang on, I thought it was a leslie but trying leslie pedals it wasn't right. There is only one pedal that can do the ADT and that's the keely 30ms. Having so much fun with the keely on my Marshall BB.
Wow! That's the closest I've ever heard anyone get to the tone on the album. You always continue to amaze me Chris!
He’s a fine player but…….got nowhere near the original tone. Sorry to disagree with you.
@@deargdoom8743, No need to be sorry. I said, it was "the closest I've ever heard anyone get to the tone on the album", so unless I heard someone get closer it's not a debatable point. BTW, most people don't even get in the same galaxy when it comes to that sound, much less the same orbit.