Accidental Midrange Snarl — Main Riff
The famous nasal tone came from Mark Knopfler’s Les Paul-family guitar through a Laney amplifier, captured with an unusual multi-microphone arrangement that engineer Neil Dorfsman described as a happy accident. Sources disagree on the exact Les Paul variant, and the sound proved difficult for the team to reproduce later. The controls below are therefore a practical approximation of the documented guitar, Laney and misaligned-microphone combination. Source: Sound on Sound’s Classic Tracks interview and Guitar World.
Signal Chain
Notes
The tone should be narrow, hollow and vocal rather than conventionally full. Fingerpick the riff and leave the spaces sharply muted.
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See the same signal chain mapped to another platform. Knob values carry over as starting points — gain ranges differ between platforms.