Money for Nothing

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.

The signature riff was recorded fingerstyle with a Gibson Les Paul through a Laney amplifier, with a wah parked in a fixed position to emphasize the nasal midrange. Sources disagree over the precise Les Paul model, while the strange texture also depended on two microphones combining partially out of phase, so the settings are representative rather than an exact knob sheet. Source: Sound on Sound Classic Tracks and Guitar World.