This picture was taken by Guy Fletcher on 3rd June 2001 with the comment: "Mark's 1958 Gibson 330 was let out for the day (as we're in London). Mark insisted I take a shot of it in the dressing room..."

This guitar was auctioned at Christie's in London on 31st January 2024. It was sold for 40.320 Pounds.

In March 2009, Guy Fletcher took a picture in the studio featuring the 1958 & 1960 ES-335's. The 1958 one is on the middle, front row.

This guitar was auctioned at Christie's in London on 31st January 2024. It was sold for 176.400 Pounds.

Click here for a nice magazine cover of Guitarist, October 2002, featuring this same guitar. Mark Knopfler mentions in the interview that it is the ES-335 (blonde) from 1959.

And in Vintage Guitar Magazine from May 2001 this is mentioned:

This picture is taken by Guy Fletcher in the studio in March 2009. The ES-335 from 1960 is indicated by the red arrow.

The Japanese magazine The Guitar featured a great article in 2001 listing all of Mark Knopfler's guitars which he used on the Sailing to Philadelphia tour 2001. The article featured separate photos of each of these guitars. Click here for a photo of this Gibson ES-335.

This guitar was auctioned at Christie's in London on 31st January 2024. It was sold for 88.200 Pounds.

Click here for another picture of this guitar.
 

This guitar was auctioned at Christie's in London on 31st January 2024. It was sold for 88.200 Pounds.

This guitar was auctioned at Christie's in London on 31st January 2024. It was sold for 37.800 Pounds.

This guitar was auctioned at Christie's in London on 31st January 2024. It was sold for 25.200 Pounds.

GIBSON LES PAUL SPECIAL
The Les Paul Special was introduced by Gibson in 1955 to fill a price point void in their catalogue. The original standard Les Paul Model the brand was built on was marketed for $235 at the time, while the more luxurious Les Paul Custom was priced at $360. The single pickup budget-priced Les Paul Junior sold for $110. Recognising that guitars at the lower end of the value range sold at higher volumes, and aspiring to compete with the less expensive Fender Telecaster, Gibson introduced a two pickup version of the Les Paul Junior. The Special will always be associated with the 'limed mahogany' finish unique to Gibson. Though referred to later as 'TV Yellow', the finish was a translucent blonde colour, not too unlike a Fender finish though of better quality. Like all Les Pauls, it was a solid body with a single cutaway until late 1959, when the body style changed to a double cutaway.

 

This guitar was auctioned at Christie's in London on 31st January 2024. It was sold for 69.300 Pounds.

This is what Mark Knopfler said in an old interview:
“We played in pubs in London. I just had this thirty-watt amplifier; we used to stick it up on two wooden chairs," he recalls nostalgically. "I used to play a Gibson Les Paul Special with a pick. It was a double-cutaway Les Paul Special that had been refinished black, probably a 1960. I bought it for £80; this would have been around 1971. My friend Steve Phillips and I painstakingly stripped it and got it back to its original cherry finish, and it was everything to me. I don't know whether I slept with it, but it wasn't far off. I absolutely adored it, and still do. I used it in the Straits when we started. I was actually just looking at a picture of us when we played on Clapham Common [London, 11th September 1977] for Charlie Gillett, and there I am playing the Special. So that's where Gibson started in my life, and that guitar will always have a special place in my heart.”

The lower picture was taken before Farrer House, Church Street, Deptford at the very first Dire Straits gig on 26th June 1977. As you can see, by then the guitar was already refinished into the cherry colour and the Bigsby Vibrato was removed.

See here for a picture of Mark with this guitar at the Marquee Club 1978 and see here for a rare magazine picture. And here for a picture where Mark is tuning his guitar. And here for a picture taken on 12th December 1979.

This guitar was auctioned at Christie's in London on 31st January 2024. It was sold for 50.400 Pounds.

This guitar was auctioned at Christie's in London on 31st January 2024. It was sold for 50.400 Pounds.

Keyboardist Guy Fletcher captured the guitar for his online studio diaries as part of a group shot of instruments used during these sessions.

This guitar was auctioned at Christie's in London on 31st January 2024. It was sold for 107.100 Pounds.

This guitar was auctioned at Christie's in London on 31st January 2024. It was sold for 60.480 Pounds.

Bearing the logo Gibson inlaid at the headstock, EVERLY at the truss rod cover and 104811 at the reverse of the headstock, labelled internally: Style GUITAR / Gibson EVERLY BROS. N / Number 104811 is hereby GUARANTEED  against faulty workmanship and materials / Gibson INC. / KALAMAZOO, MICH / U.S.A.,

Acquired in 1998, Mark Knopfler kept this guitar in his study
for home use. Knopfler: "I loved the Everlys so much, you know, that I always wanted to have an Everlys Gibson." The song Why worry, recorded by Dire Straits for their 1985 album Brothers in arms, was reportedly originally written by Knopfler with the Everly Brothers in mind. The brothers recorded their own version of Why worry the following year for their 1986 album Born yesterday. Knopfler was thrilled to perform the song with Don and Phil Everly themselves when Chet Atkins invited all three to take part in the Cinemax television special Chet Atkins and Friends at Vanderbilt University in Nashville on 1st May 1987.

This guitar was auctioned at Christie's in London on 31st January 2024. It was sold for 52.920 Pounds.

The lower picture is taken by Guy Fletcher at a soundcheck during the Shangri-La tour, Ryman Auditorium, Nashville, USA, 13th July 2005. The show was in aid of the Chet Atkins Music Education Fund. Guy mentioned: On a couple of tunes, Mark and Richard used two of guitars which belonged to Chet. These came out of the Hall of fame for the evening.

It looks like the same guitar as the upper picture, but the colour of the body and switch are more red. Is it a different guitar or is it just another light that creates a different colour and is it actually the same guitar as above?

Mark Knopfler received this guitar as a gift from friend and music store owner Rudy Pensa in late December 1985. Mark appears delighted with his new ES-175 in a rare personal photograph of the jolly occasion at Rudy’s Music Stop on New York’s West 48th Street, fingering a tune as his pal Rudy enjoys a festive tipple. See two more pictures here and here.

This guitar was auctioned at Christie's in London on 31st January 2024. It was sold for 60.480 Pounds.

Specifically searching for a Gibson ES-350T model, as played by one of his earliest musical influences - rock and roll legend Chuck Berry, Mark Knopfler purchased this guitar from Rudy Pensa in the mid-1980s. Interviewed by Neil McCormick for The Telegraph in 2012, Knopfler recalled: ‘I fell in love with songs when I was very, very small. Chuck Berry made a huge impression, where the rhythm of the lyrics is as important as the music, there’s a ricocheting effect.’ As a music-mad teen, Knopfler saw Chuck Berry live at Newcastle City Hall in May 1964, later noting to journalist Joe Jackson, ‘I knew I was going to see something good, but I was completely mesmerised,’ and jesting that he has been known to do Berry’s duckwalk on occasion. Knopfler elaborated on the significance of Berry’s influence in 2014, telling Vintage Guitar magazine: 'I have always thought in terms of the transatlantic nature of music. My idea of heaven is somewhere where the Mississippi Delta meets the Tyne. What I wanted, from the very first album with Dire Straits and songs like Sultans of swing, was to write my own geography into the American music that shaped me, to identify the English, Irish, and Scottish landmarks on Chuck Berry’s Road.'

When producing American singer songwriter Willy DeVille’s 1987 album Miracle, which was recorded at AIR Studios London in early 1987, Knopfler used this Gibson ES-350, played through a Fender Vibrolux, to record his solo pass on DeVille’s Van Morrison cover Could you would you?.

This guitar was auctioned at Christie's in London on 31st January 2024. It was sold for 75.600 Pounds.

Many years later, Mark used this guitar again. The picture on the left was taken by Guy Fletcher during the recording sessions at British Grove Studios, February 2014.

The logo Gibson inlaid at the headstock, labelled internally: Style Guitar / Switchmaster / Number A 25951 is hereby  GUARANTEED against faulty workmanship and materials. Gibson INC. KALAMAZOO, MICHIGAN U.S.A., ink stamped internally V6650 9

Acquired circa 1990, Mark Knopfler kept this guitar for occasional home and studio use.

See here for another picture of this guitar.

This guitar was auctioned at Christie's in London on 31st January 2024. It was sold for 60.480 Pounds

Click here for another picture of this guitar.

This guitar was auctioned at Christie's in London on 31st January 2024. It was sold for 50.400 Pounds.

Click here for another picture of this guitar.

This guitar was auctioned at Christie's in London on 31st January 2024. It was sold for 30.240 Pounds.

It is a one of a kind Gibson 'Chet Atkins' SST prototype which Mark gave away to be on display in the Country Music Hall of fame. This is one of several guitars which Chet gave to Mark. Click here for another picture of the guitar and here for the award of appreciation Mark received on 18th April 2002.

Click here for another picture of this guitar.

This guitar was auctioned at Christie's in London on 31st January 2024. It was sold for 22.680 Pounds.