TEISCO, JAPAN, CIRCA 1966-1969

Mark Knopfler purchased this bass in January 2004 from Fat Dog’s Subway Guitars in Berkeley, California, forming a pair with the previous lot. Photographed by co-producer Guy Fletcher, Knopfler was captured playing the sunburst Spectrum bass at British Grove Studios in 2006 during early demo recordings for his 2007 solo studio album Kill To Get Crimson. When the full band joined them to commence recording sessions in January 2007, bassist Glenn Worf used the Spectrum to record his bass parts for the album’s lead single 'True Love Will Never Fade', while Knopfler laid down the lead guitar on a Teisco Spectrum 5 (lot 72).

Knopfler told us: 'I play bass very badly. There’s the wire wound and the flat wound thing. I really enjoyed having a wire wound bass, but also to keep a flat wound bass, because a lot of the records would have flat wound strings on those basses. And then I just had totally impractical things… they’re just beautiful objects. If you know what you’re doing, you can coax really good sounds out of them.'