Brothers In Arms guitar tone
Dire Straits · Mark Knopfler
Brothers in Arms (1985), recorded at AIR Studios Montserrat and mixed at the Power Station, New York; produced by Mark Knopfler and Neil Dorfsman.
warm, sustaining blues-rock lead (neck humbucker)
The rig Dire Straits used
Researched from interviews, production write-ups and gear histories — not guessed.
Guitar
Gibson Les Paul Standard (1984, '59-style)
Amplifier
Marshall JTM45 (mid-1960s head, both channels jumpered)
Cabinet
Marshall 4x12 (Electro-Voice EV12L)
Microphone
Shure SM57 (dynamic, close-mic'd)
Signal chain
The order the original sound was built in. The exact settings get dialled for your own amp or modeller when you generate the tone.
Get this tone on your rig
Pick your amp or modeller and we’ll build Brothers In Arms for it — with a preset file you can load, not a list of knob positions.
Why we think this is right
The authoritative Knopfler resource mk-guitar.com documents the title track as a Gibson Les Paul Standard (neck pickup, fingerstyle, no pick) into a mid-1960s Marshall JTM45 with its matching 4x12, with compression/limiting and a large studio reverb on the guitar. This revision replaces the previously stored Soldano SLO-100 with that JTM45. The Soldano attribution does not survive scrutiny on two counts: mk-guitar's own article on Knopfler's JTM45, built around Guy Fletcher's recording-diary photograph of the amp and its cabinet, identifies that head as the one used on both Money for Nothing and Brothers in Arms, and the SLO-100 was not released until 1987, two years after this album. The JTM45 also explains the sound better - a jumpered non-master Bassman-derived amp compressing naturally at high volume, with the dynamic range coming from the guitar's volume knob and the player's fingers rather than from a channel switch. Compression is documented for this track but the unit is not named, so the 1176LN here is an era-correct inference; the delay identity is likewise inferred while its presence is audible. The cabinet speakers are Electro-Voice EV12Ls according to Guy Fletcher, with the original Celestions the alternative.
Sources
- mk-guitar.com (Mark Knopfler Guitar Site) - 'Mark Knopfler's JTM 45 Marshall amp of Money for Nothing and Brothers in Arms' (2008), citing Guy Fletcher's recording diary photograph
- mk-guitar.com per-track gear listing for the Brothers in Arms album (Les Paul Standard 1984, neck pickup, fingerstyle; compression/limiter and reverb)
- Guy Fletcher recording diaries (photograph of the JTM45 head and matching 4x12 cabinet)
- Sound On Sound - Dire Straits 'Brothers in Arms' Classic Tracks (AIR Montserrat / Power Station)
- Soldano company history: the SLO-100 was launched in 1987, after this 1985 album