Very nice video. Thanks for the suggestion. 
 
I thought this odd though. Under the YouTube video description it is described as:
 
Published on Dec 18, 2012
Documentary
    Category: Comedy
 
'Comedy' category???? 

Thanks Bit. Started watching a litlle earlier. Gonna put up some coffee and finish watching now.

bapu

bitflipper
BTW, the luthier shown at the end is quite famous; the waiting list to buy one of his custom-made guitars (assuming you can afford one) can be as long as 10 years.

Is that the guy that built Clapton's acoustic?
 
I read a book about him. IIRC he didn't even know who Clapton was pretty much up to the day he delivered the guitar*
 
*Clapton actually commissioned two. One for him and one to auction off.

The builder of Clapton's guitar was Wayne Henderson.... a wonderful luthier and player (bluegrass) from Virginia near the borders of NC and Tennessee. I hate to shamefully drop names but I got to meet Wayne while performing a festival in France back in '99... not far from Lyon. He is one of the nicest people I have ever met... it was later I learned how great a builder he was. There is some great you tube footage of Wayne and his shop, including some wonderful Doc Watson moments.

Hey Bit.... thanks for sharing this. Great video...

It's a really excellent video.  Gave me insight into where Mark's techniques came from.  With the exception of his toy first guitar, I think his first guitars were the ones that had the magic.  Those later guitars were associated with his more distorted songs  and didn't win me over like the songs through their first 4 records.  Once he started distorting and using those later guitars shown in the video I thought the sound wasn't as inviting.
 
He's still my favorite or in my top 3 at least.

Thanks very much for that. Fantastic to get that insight into Mark knopfers' playing and instrument choices. So sad that I at one time had the very near perfect copy of that 61 strat and sold it when I was a young man. Wish I had it now.

Hi,
 
I don't mind watching these, but every time I see them, it's like ... a nice home movie ... and I don't feel that the work itself gained from it as much as it could and we, the audience, did not learn anything about the craft ... so the craft for 2 songs, is a guitar ... and the rest of the work?
 
I sincerely doubt that anyone plays anything, strictly because of one guitar ... you play for the sound, and for the words, and the music within you, which may have, or not have, that instrument, as the sound is so different ... or the feel is so specific, but that is not something that is always visible to the public, or audience.
 
Pretty soon, we will hear about Keith Richards and his guitars ... and then Mick Jagger and his microphones. And ..... sorry! There is more to the art of it all than just an instrument and a song.

Thanks Dave I really enjoyed it a lot.  It is very easy to under estimate how much influence the actual guitar had on Mark and the songs he wrote at the time. There were ideas from inside of course but the guitar itself somehow has quite an impact on how those ideas come out.
 
You only have to listen to the way he played Sultans with that Strat etc. The fact he could bend multiple notes at once etc..Check out the other songs with the other guitars. They are all related to the guitar in some way. 
 
It is really about a combination of three things. The ideas, the instrument and the expression/playing.
 
As a synthesist myself I experience the same thing.  If I am fiddling with a Moog Modular the music will come out sounding like Tangerine Dream.  If its another wierd wild instrument then the music is often reflected in that.  Instruments should and do inspire.
 
But then it is not always that way either. if you think of how the Beatles wrote their music, it was not heavily influenced by the instruments they were using at the time. Lennon and McCartney probably sat down at the piano and held the same guitar in many instances when they wrote some classic tunes. In this case it is more about ideas and performances. But there is no doubt though that the instrument itself can have a huge impact, as often it does.
 

Hi,
 
It was an enjoyable watch ... no doubt about that. It usually is, although one does not really learn how the musician got his results, and this is better shown in a film like "It's Gonna Get Loud" when you even get small discussions of how something brought out something else ... although, nowadays, I am not sure that a special guitar will show as much as it could have 40 or 50 years ago, since so much stuff these days is computerized and from a DAW, and not necessarily an instrument.
 
I was asking a friend, if he played one of the basses in Trillion, and then his own, would an outsider know the difference? He said he doubted it but there would be a side of it that could help you define it, and it would be playing details ... strings bend, stretch, the finger sticks and clicks, the little things that can add to the piece that he can see on his recording from listening, but an audience would not have any idea. But that for the most part, few people would know the difference, and nowadays, you can treat a guitar so much, that no one can determine pretty much anything.
 
I think that we will be entering a phase in music history where the individual ability to create something is going to be hidden more and more ... and hopefully we can get it back ... someday.

 
 
Really enjoyed that, thanks Dave.
 
I never knew he was left handed.