Money for Nothing....... guitar sound

Rocker

What cheap pedal will give an approximation of Mark Knopflers guitar sound on the song Money for Nothing....

We sing it at family get togethers and I want the guitar to sound as close to the record as I can get it, within reason of course. 

If anyone is selling such a pedal at low cost, or one of the cheaper clones that will do the job, please contact me by PM. Thanks. 

ecc83

Weird! I have the BIA album on my old phone and was pumping it out through a small mixer to an Arcam 50W amp yesterday!

I have read, a no doubt apocryphal story ,that when the band went back into the studio the next day they could for the life of them nail that sound again?

More to the point? IF you can't find that sound in a "Dual" it is lost to the world! (shameless span)

Dave.

ICBM

Ah, the age-old question...

It's a remarkably hard sound to duplicate - a strange combination of a fixed wah and an oddly 'harmonic' overdrive. The original recording was done with a random mic placement on a Laney combo, and a Morley wah pedal. ecc83 is right that apparently they couldn't reproduce the sound when they later tried.

https://www.toontrack.com/news/the-money-for-nothing-tone/

Try a Boss Metal Zone starting with the distortion fairly low, the bass and treble turned off, the mid full up and play around with the mid frequency - it's a long time since I used one but I think I managed to get something similar like that.

If the Boss is too expensive, Behringer make a copy - the Ultra Metal. Which is probably the pinkest thing ever made after 1990 .

noisepolluter

Rocker said:

What cheap pedal will give an approximation of Mark Knopflers guitar sound on the song Money for Nothing....

We sing it at family get togethers and I want the guitar to sound as close to the record as I can get it, within reason of course. 

If anyone is selling such a pedal at low cost, or one of the cheaper clones that will do the job, please contact me by PM. Thanks. 

I don’t have one for sale, but have just  tried a TC Electronic Dark Matter and been impressed with it for crunch sounds - you should be able to get a new one for less than £40.

I believe another key part of MK’s sound on that song is having a wah pedal before the drive, with the treadle rocked back a bit for a more nasal sound.  Bit of experimentation and you should get a fair approximation of the sound.

Danny1969

Half cocked Wah with a Les Paul or similar HB guitar. Most of it is in the playing technique though, it's a pedal tone trick that you don't necessary   hear at first, took me ages to puzzle it out

NorthernStomps

The Magnetic Midphoria is perfect. I have one in stock....

prowla

Yep - a Wah at half way for that hollow sound.

Emiel

‘ere ye go, the man himself explains it:

https://youtu.be/59_juI9dnRY

Philtre

The cocked wah. Or, as I like to call it, the "stink" wah. Because of Zappa.

Interviewer - "Do you have any suggestions about how to use a wah-wah?"

FZ - "The first thing you don't do is tap your foot on it in time with the music. The two basics are to locate a notch in the pedal so it gets a mid-range sustain that is tuned properly to the amp EQ that you have, so you get a nice boxy sound out of it to make all those stinkin' tones that teenagers really go for, and the other thing is to move it very slightly and put most of the action in the rear half of the pedal, because that's where you get most of the speaking type sounds out of it. When you push it right down and open the filter all the way up you get that squeaky sound, and I don't like that. I like the middle range of the pedal. Don't tilt it all the way forward or back, just work the middle of it. It only takes a very little foot movement to change the whole sound of your guitar."

Phil_C

I play this song all the time and I find (obviously) that every guitar makes it sound different. Les Paul is best for it imo.

Gain pedal, light distortion and a crybaby wah. Takes some experimenting with the wah to find the correct static position.

MattBanshee

Not unimportant - he never used a plectrum and played with fingers. The video suggests heavy use of his thumb on the bass notes, which will have an impact on the tone too.

stephen.wood125

Great video clip. Cheers for sharing!

Littlejonny

I nailed it on Logic Pro with bridge humbucker into EQ with a little mid hump into a RAT, into a clean amp sound with a tiny bit of chorus pedal and a very fast sample delay for stereo effect plus a little reverb

if you wanted to get this sound out of 1 cheap pedal, I think the closest you’ll get is a Boss DS-2, which has the right type of breakup but also a nice mid boost. 

I heard that he didn’t use a wah, and that it’s a cranked fender tweed, but he used a wah to recreate it live.

tone1

My Palmer Distortion sounds pretty close 

Voxman

MattBanshee said:

Not unimportant - he never used a plectrum and played with fingers. The video suggests heavy use of his thumb on the bass notes, which will have an impact on the tone too.

This is one song you have to use your fingers on to get that stocatto lilt thing going. Interestingly Knopfler did start to use a plectrum later in his career for some things but always felt more comfortable with his fingers, using thumb first and second fingers.

EricTheWeary

Littlejonny said:

I heard that he didn’t use a wah, and that it’s a cranked fender tweed, but he used a wah to recreate it live.

Ahh...

ICBM said:

https://www.toontrack.com/news/the-money-for-nothing-tone/

Voxman

About 12 years ago I had a go at at MFN trying to get something like the right sound, and it's really tough to get it. Unfortunately I only had a cheap camera at the time and the sound quality is pretty poor - if you have an EQ on your soundcard and can up the highs & mids it will sound closer to the sound in the room. It's not the best playing in the world I know, but its not an easy one to do.

smudge_lad

Littlejonny said:

I heard that he didn’t use a wah, and that it’s a cranked fender tweed, but he used a wah to recreate it live.

I also read that a big part of why they could never re-create it properly, is because one of the mic's was kicked/knocked in the studio, which changed the sound that was being picked up/recorded. When that happened they just went with it because it sounded so good.

ICBM

Voxman said:

About 12 years ago I had a go at at MFN trying to get something like the right sound, and it's really tough to get it. Unfortunately I only had a cheap camera at the time and the sound quality is pretty poor - if you have an EQ on your soundcard and can up the highs & mids it will sound closer to the sound in the room. It's not the best playing in the world I know, but its not an easy one to do.

That's not bad at all - it would easily pass in a pub gig, 99% of punters would think it was spot on. It's the combination of the boxiness of the main sound and the squeaky harmonics that makes it.

John_A

ICBM said:

Voxman said:

About 12 years ago I had a go at at MFN trying to get something like the right sound, and it's really tough to get it. Unfortunately I only had a cheap camera at the time and the sound quality is pretty poor - if you have an EQ on your soundcard and can up the highs & mids it will sound closer to the sound in the room. It's not the best playing in the world I know, but its not an easy one to do.

That's not bad at all - it would easily pass in a pub gig, 99% of punters would think it was spot on. It's the combination of the boxiness of the main sound and the squeaky harmonics that makes it.

Never mind punters, I’m a guitarist and it was close enough for me 

Rocker

Voxman said:

About 12 years ago I had a go at at MFN trying to get something like the right sound, and it's really tough to get it. Unfortunately I only had a cheap camera at the time and the sound quality is pretty poor - if you have an EQ on your soundcard and can up the highs & mids it will sound closer to the sound in the room. It's not the best playing in the world I know, but its not an easy one to do.

Well done, sounds fine to me.