Very rare video from the second warm up for the Mandela show on 11th June 1988. This concert are in my opinion better then the real Mandela show. Enjoy!
The new addition to the guitar family. A big Welcome the Suhr Knopfler. "Suhr standard carve top Knopfler." One of Mark Knoplfers main guitars from 1988 onwards. A beautiful instrument. Master builder John Suhr designed and built the instrument back in 88 whilst working for Rudy Pensa in NY USA. Brief history of the guitar, Knopfler needed a guitar for gigging that would sound and play like his 58 Les Paul and his red Fender Stratocaster. It was becoming too much to take all his guitars on the road, some of which were priceless. MK needed a guitar that could give him the two very different sounds in one package. This is where his good friend Rudy Pensa came in. Rudy, a business man not a builder, had a little specialist guitar shop in NY USA where he employed master builder John Suhr. Pensa and Suhr would later team up around the time MK was looking for a new guitar. They became Pensa-Suhr. At the time John Suhr was building his own guitar and both Rudy and MK were so impressed that Rudy convinced Suhr to give it to MK for a set of gigs coming up. This was May 1988. The issue was knopfler needed this new guitar like now. He had a set of important gigs lined up the following month. The first being "The Prince's Trust Gala" on 5th & 6th June 1988, then on the 8th & 9th there was the Mandela warm-up gig with Eric Clapton performing with Dire Straits at Hammersmith Odeon, London and then the televised Mandela 70th birthday gig on the 11th June. Surh had very little time to finish off the guitar, it needed painting and pickups fitting, which you will note later greater a new setbif orobkems. The paint would have only just dried in time for the Prince's Trust gig. John was surprised the paint dried so fast. Cosmetics was another issue. MK wanted to show off this guitar in all it's glory, however he wasn't happy with plastic pickup surrounds. So he requested that the humbucker pickup, the large pickup next to the bridge to be mounted without any pickup holders (the plastic surrounds as seen on his Les Paul). He liked the colour of the EMG active pickups and thought the pickup holder would look messy and out of place. The Floyd Rose. Suhr had already routed out for a Floyd Rose, after all the guitar was for him not Mk at that time. Mk didn't like the Floyd floating trem and asked for it to be fixed back to the body. This created better resonance and he found it more convenient for fine tuning. Mark liked to bend more then one string at a time. A floating trem, he felt would have an adverse affect on the strings. As a result, and sue to the guitar body being extremely thin Suhr had to mount this pickup from the rear of the guitar, a very unusual way of mounting pickups. If you look closely at MK's guitar you will see the two small fixings screws. The other issue John had was fitting the 5 position selection switch. The body was too slim to house so he had to trim down the rear of the switch just enough for the rear control cover to cover it. One other request was the neck to be maple with a rosewood finger board, which John wasn't too keen on due to the body being mahogany like a Les Paul. Fender guitars don't usually use mahogany hence their use of maple necks. John believed, and many would agree that the frequency emitted from the mahogany gets cancelled out with the maple resulting in a damping of the sound. Hence why Suhr always offers the matching mahogany neck with his builds. It really does improve the sound. In 1991 Suhr and Pensa party company. Suhr had become in demand due to his skills and abilities in both the guitar and Amplifier world and wanted more control over the full building progress. He's since built some of the best guitars on the planet. Now labelled "Suhr" with this Knopfler Standard Carve top version being the jewel in the crown. Suhr re. leaving Pensa "Steve Marchione was trained to replace me when I moved to CA to work with Bradshaw in the beginning of 91. Suhr was now able to have full control over the whole guitar build and able to so it in house, unlike at Pensa they used to outside help. Suhr would do all only be doing the delicate work the rest was contracted out. A lovely instrument and if you can ever get your hands on one be sure to buy it as it's a sure investment. Regarding the Les Paul and Fender Stratocaster sounds needed. This created a problem for Suhr to solve and to solve it fast. The guitar was needed within weeks for the upcoming gigs. As we know a Les Paul guitar uses humbucker pick-ups which are two single coil pick-ups mounted together with reverse wiring on one of the pickups to reduce the HUM caused by high gain amplifiers. Single coil pickups, when plugged into a high gain guitar Amps will create a loud hum and the louder you go the louder the hum. It's a pain to control. This is why rock guitarist use humbuckers. Mark Knopfler was wanting this Les Paul humbucker sound for songs like "Money for Nothing" along with single coil Stratocaster sounds for songs like "Sultans of swing." For that twangy strat signature sound. So the guitar would need at least 1 x humbucker (Les Paul sound ) and 2 x single coil pickups (Fender Stratocaster sound) BUT with no hum on all pickups. A tall order. So John quickly fitted the Active EMG range of pickups that where new on the marked, designed to address this common HUM problem. Lace sensor At this time Fender was also addressing the same issue and had employed Don Lace to address this. You will see the likes of Eric Clapton using these Lace Sensor around this time. Lace Sensor is a guitar pickup designed by Don Lace and manufactured by AGI (Actodyne General International) since 1985. This line of electric guitar pickups was used exclusively by Fender from 1987 to 1996. What was the issue? Pick-up Humming. The issue he was with the large number of wired windings around the magnet poles of a single coil pick-up. It was found that by reducing the number of winding (loops) the HUM would reduce to a unnoticed level, however the drawback was a massive reduction in the pick-up out puts levels. Making the sound output really low. To address this EMG designed a circuit board powered by a 9V battery located in the rear of the guitar to amplifier the sound. Bingo u have a stratocaster single coil sound with no hum at a standard volume level. Now there was one other draw back to this technology. The humbucker pickup, as noted above consists of 2 x single coil pickups wired together in series, so the sound is NOT fender Strat like when the selection switch is in the second position. Bridge and neck pickups on together. A lot of Fender Stratocaster players use the bridge and middle combination a lot. It's a common strat sound. Normally a humbucker can have the two pickups split at the wiring loom as there are 4 wires. 2 for each pickup, however the EMG humbucker just has the 2 wires and NO way to split the coil to give a single coil strat sound. This is where John Suhr's electronic knowledge comes in. He had to quickly design a wiring mod to reduce the output of the humbucker to take away some of the bass, bottom end of the sound to give it the Stratocaster high range twang. This is what he did The idea was to put a resistor and capacitor in series on the wiring harness (switch) where the 'humbucker meets switch position 2 (bridge + middle). Suhr used a 22k / .033uf. This drops the volume of the humbucker (the large bridge pickup) a bit and reduces some of the bass. This new sound gives you the fender Stratocaster sound you find in position 2. When the selector is in position 1 you get full bridge humbucker (Les Paul sound) and in position 2 Bridge and middle, the signal passes via cap and resistor to reduce the humbuckers output to balance and "quack" better with the middle and bingo you have the famous Stratocaster sound. (Resistence : metal film 22Kohms 0.25 Watt capacitor : 33 nF (0.033) 63 volts remove the original shunt beetween 1 and 2 move the orange cable from 2 to 1 you have to soldering the 2 components in serial (no polarity) and soldering them beetween 1 and 2)
The new addition to the guitar family. A big Welcome the Suhr Knopfler.
"Suhr standard carve top Knopfler." One of Mark Knoplfers main guitars from 1988 onwards. A beautiful instrument. Master builder John Suhr designed and built the instrument back in 88 whilst working for Rudy Pensa in NY USA.
Brief history of the guitar,
Knopfler needed a guitar for gigging that would sound and play like his 58 Les Paul and his red Fender Stratocaster. It was becoming too much to take all his guitars on the road, some of which were priceless.
MK needed a guitar that could give him the two very different sounds in one package. This is where his good friend Rudy Pensa came in. Rudy, a business man not a builder, had a little specialist guitar shop in NY USA where he employed master builder John Suhr. Pensa and Suhr would later team up around the time MK was looking for a new guitar. They became Pensa-Suhr.
At the time John Suhr was building his own guitar and both Rudy and MK were so impressed that Rudy convinced Suhr to give it to MK for a set of gigs coming up. This was May 1988. The issue was knopfler needed this new guitar like now. He had a set of important gigs lined up the following month. The first being "The Prince's Trust Gala" on 5th & 6th June 1988, then on the 8th & 9th there was the Mandela warm-up gig with Eric Clapton performing with Dire Straits at Hammersmith Odeon, London and then the televised Mandela 70th birthday gig on the 11th June.
Surh had very little time to finish off the guitar, it needed painting and pickups fitting, which you will note later greater a new setbif orobkems. The paint would have only just dried in time for the Prince's Trust gig. John was surprised the paint dried so fast.
Cosmetics was another issue. MK wanted to show off this guitar in all it's glory, however he wasn't happy with plastic pickup surrounds. So he requested that the humbucker pickup, the large pickup next to the bridge to be mounted without any pickup holders (the plastic surrounds as seen on his Les Paul). He liked the colour of the EMG active pickups and thought the pickup holder would look messy and out of place.
The Floyd Rose. Suhr had already routed out for a Floyd Rose, after all the guitar was for him not Mk at that time. Mk didn't like the Floyd floating trem and asked for it to be fixed back to the body. This created better resonance and he found it more convenient for fine tuning. Mark liked to bend more then one string at a time. A floating trem, he felt would have an adverse affect on the strings.
As a result, and sue to the guitar body being extremely thin Suhr had to mount this pickup from the rear of the guitar, a very unusual way of mounting pickups. If you look closely at MK's guitar you will see the two small fixings screws.
The other issue John had was fitting the 5 position selection switch. The body was too slim to house so he had to trim down the rear of the switch just enough for the rear control cover to cover it.
One other request was the neck to be maple with a rosewood finger board, which John wasn't too keen on due to the body being mahogany like a Les Paul. Fender guitars don't usually use mahogany hence their use of maple necks. John believed, and many would agree that the frequency emitted from the mahogany gets cancelled out with the maple resulting in a damping of the sound. Hence why Suhr always offers the matching mahogany neck with his builds. It really does improve the sound.
In 1991 Suhr and Pensa party company. Suhr had become in demand due to his skills and abilities in both the guitar and Amplifier world and wanted more control over the full building progress. He's since built some of the best guitars on the planet. Now labelled "Suhr" with this Knopfler Standard Carve top version being the jewel in the crown.
Suhr re. leaving Pensa "Steve Marchione was trained to replace me when I moved to CA to work with Bradshaw in the beginning of 91.
Suhr was now able to have full control over the whole guitar build and able to so it in house, unlike at Pensa they used to outside help. Suhr would do all only be doing the delicate work the rest was contracted out.
A lovely instrument and if you can ever get your hands on one be sure to buy it as it's a sure investment.
Regarding the Les Paul and Fender Stratocaster sounds needed. This created a problem for Suhr to solve and to solve it fast. The guitar was needed within weeks for the upcoming gigs.
As we know a Les Paul guitar uses humbucker pick-ups which are two single coil pick-ups mounted together with reverse wiring on one of the pickups to reduce the HUM caused by high gain amplifiers.
Single coil pickups, when plugged into a high gain guitar Amps will create a loud hum and the louder you go the louder the hum. It's a pain to control. This is why rock guitarist use humbuckers.
Mark Knopfler was wanting this Les Paul humbucker sound for songs like "Money for Nothing" along with single coil Stratocaster sounds for songs like "Sultans of swing." For that twangy strat signature sound.
So the guitar would need at least 1 x humbucker (Les Paul sound ) and 2 x single coil pickups (Fender Stratocaster sound) BUT with no hum on all pickups. A tall order.
So John quickly fitted the Active EMG range of pickups that where new on the marked, designed to address this common HUM problem.
Lace sensor
At this time Fender was also addressing the same issue and had employed Don Lace to address this. You will see the likes of Eric Clapton using these Lace Sensor around this time.
Lace Sensor is a guitar pickup designed by Don Lace and manufactured by AGI (Actodyne General International) since 1985.
This line of electric guitar pickups was used exclusively by Fender from 1987 to 1996.
What was the issue? Pick-up Humming.
The issue he was with the large number of wired windings around the magnet poles of a single coil pick-up. It was found that by reducing the number of winding (loops) the HUM would reduce to a unnoticed level, however the drawback was a massive reduction in the pick-up out puts levels. Making the sound output really low. To address this EMG designed a circuit board powered by a 9V battery located in the rear of the guitar to amplifier the sound. Bingo u have a stratocaster single coil sound with no hum at a standard volume level.
Now there was one other draw back to this technology. The humbucker pickup, as noted above consists of 2 x single coil pickups wired together in series, so the sound is NOT fender Strat like when the selection switch is in the second position. Bridge and neck pickups on together.
A lot of Fender Stratocaster players use the bridge and middle combination a lot. It's a common strat sound. Normally a humbucker can have the two pickups split at the wiring loom as there are 4 wires. 2 for each pickup, however the EMG humbucker just has the 2 wires and NO way to split the coil to give a single coil strat sound.
This is where John Suhr's electronic knowledge comes in. He had to quickly design a wiring mod to reduce the output of the humbucker to take away some of the bass, bottom end of the sound to give it the Stratocaster high range twang.
This is what he did
The idea was to put a resistor and capacitor in series on the wiring harness (switch) where the 'humbucker meets switch position 2 (bridge + middle). Suhr used a 22k / .033uf. This drops the volume of the humbucker (the large bridge pickup) a bit and reduces some of the bass.
This new sound gives you the fender Stratocaster sound you find in position 2.
When the selector is in position 1 you get full bridge humbucker (Les Paul sound) and in position 2 Bridge and middle, the signal passes via cap and resistor to reduce the humbuckers output to balance and "quack" better with the middle and bingo you have the famous Stratocaster sound.
(Resistence : metal film 22Kohms 0.25 Watt capacitor : 33 nF (0.033) 63 volts
remove the original shunt beetween 1 and 2 move the orange cable from 2 to 1
you have to soldering the 2 components in serial (no polarity) and soldering them beetween 1 and 2)
got any vidoes from the warm up gig?