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#16058
Ted Fletcher
Keymaster

Mark Knopfler’s guitar sound is a lot more complicated than that….. Mark has always been a perfectionist and spends a huge amount of time choosing the right amplifier, microphone and acoustic environment as well as the right guitar. The recorded sound is again a combination of engineering skills of Chuck Ainlay amongst others (including my own son Guy), and some very carefully set-up equipment. Yes, it’s true Chuck uses my compressors but I’m not keen on the idea of ‘name dropping’ as a way of adding credence to the quality of equipment.

But I’m delighted that over time, the old SC2 has become a bit of a legend, as have the American compressors the LA2A, the 1176 and even the old Altec 436 that I used to use in my KPM studio in Denmark Street because I couldn’t afford anything better!

Now here’s a secret…. I admit that when I was testing the original SC2 back in 1988 (I still have that one by the way), I used the attack and release times of the Altec as a model! It doesn’t sound quite the same as the Altec owing to the different ‘shape’ of both the attack and the release characteristics…… I ended up preferring my own and getting rid of the Altec! :)