This 2000s Fender Stratocaster has been Mark Speer’s main (and only) guitar ever since he bought it in the early 2000s, and he used it on all of the Khruangbin’s live and studio recordings. The exact model of the guitar is unknown, but based on Mark description, and on how the guitar looks, it almost certantly a 2002 Fender Classic Series ’70s Stratocaster.
It’s the only one I have only guitar I got this guess the 2001-2002 somewhere in there so I’ve had it for a long time.
Rig Rundown: Khruangbin’s Mark Speer & Laura Lee
If someone handed me their guitar I’d be like, ‘Wow, what a nice instrument,’ but I won’t sound very good on it, I’m used to mine. I’m not a guitar player – I play that guitar. I’ve been using that one thing for the whole time. I know exactly where certain notes are going to sing more than others. Or if I play here versus here, I can really control the timbre of where things are happening and why – the volume knob, things that I do against the gain structure, it’s all part of the voice. Really, it’s my voice, right?
Guitar.com interview with Mark Speer and Laura Lee
Current Specs
The guitar was built from an ash body finished with a clear gloss polyester lacquer that leaves the wood grain visible, and an all-maple neck with a U-shaped profile and a vintage-style 7.25-inch fretboard radius. The headstock follows the 1970s aesthetic, featuring a large profile and a thick Fender logo with gold edges, along with some modern quirks like the three-bolt neck plate and a bullet truss rod. Tuning is handled by Fender/Schaller F-style tuners and a bone nut.
The electronics consists of two DiMarzios, a DP188 in the neck, and a DP188SP in the bridge position, with a stock Fender single-coil in the middle. Speer used the DiMarzio Cruiser pickups mainly to get rid of some of the notorious single-coil buzz, but also the get some more gain/sustain from the guitar.
Control is managed via a five-way “Super Switch” that Speer installed himself. Due to a wiring error during the installation, the neck and middle pickup combination is out of phase while the bridge and middle combination remains in phase, which opened the door to some unique sounds for Mark.
Ok so at the time I replaced those pickups, I put in the DP188 & DP188SP dimarzio into the neck & bridge positions. I coulda sworn that they were both cruisers but when I looked it up recently I found that the DP188’s are designated as the “Pro-Track”, so looks like I’ve been handing out the wrong info.
Anyway when I put the neck pickup in, I think I wired it into the switch wrong, and so what came out was this weird tinny gross little sound that I wasn’t used to at all. I thought dang I better get someone to fix this thing, but I played it as it was on a gig and fell in love with how nasty it sounded. Afaik, the neck is in the neck, and the bridge is in the bridge. The pickup in the middle is a stock fender pickup, and I assure you that the out-of-phaseness is wired into the middle+neck combo. The neck pickup by itself is a humbucker. middle pickup is exactly how it has always been.
Mark Speer on Reddit
The bridge is equipped with TUSQ saddles, chosen specifically to eliminate the metal burrs that typically cause string breakage. This hardware choice, paired with the use of flatwound strings, creates a highly durable setup that allows Speer to change his strings as infrequently as once per tour.
The string trees on the headstock are not stock, but they don’t appear to be TUSQ either, as one might expect. The ones Mark has are rectangular, as opposed to the oval-shaped TUSQ ones currently on the market. If you happen to know what they are, be sure to leave a comment below.
Lastly, over years of heavy use, the guitar has undergone several refrets to address significant wear. The current setup uses jumbo frets, which are significantly larger than the originals. Exact specs are not currently available, but they are probably something similar to Dunlop 6150 jumbos.
Changes over the Years
Before the guitar looked as it does today, it went through a phase where it looked almost completely different. Mark had a tortoiseshell pickguard on it and he painted the neck pickup green. Shortly after, around 2015, he put the original white pickguard back on, installed a DiMarzio in the bridge position, and apparently painted the whole thing white — the pickups, the pickguard, the knobs, everything — so they all match. This is how the guitar looks today.
It’s the same guitar. I was still experimenting with “the look” at this point but that green pickup is that same dimarzio, just a different pickup cover. By 2015, I had replaced the bridge pickup with a dimarzio as well, replaced the saddles with white saddles instead of black ones, put the old white pickguard back on, and spray painted the whole thing “off white” so it all looked the same. Also dang looks like I was rocking the guitar way lower than I do now
Mark Speer on Reddit
Stolen?
According to a story posted on Reddit (and confirmed by Mark himself in the comments) – long before forming the band Khruangbin, Mark had his guitar stolen sometime in the early 2000s. Hoping to track it down, he posted a “Missing” ad on Craigslist featuring a photo of the instrument.
A few days later, a man named Bart – an employee at the legendary Houston shop Rockin’ Robin – was reading Mark’s ad. In an incredible stroke of luck, a person walked into the store at that exact moment carrying the stolen guitar. Bart kept his cool, pretending he needed to step into the back of the shop for a moment; instead, he secretly called Mark to tell him his guitar had just arrived.
Leave a Reply