The Dire Straits man details the mixed feelings he experienced when saying goodbye to some of his treasured six-strings.

Goodbyes are never easy, especially if you’re a musician parting ways with your favourite gear. In a new interview, Mark Knopfler admits how a few guitars he recently auctioned for charity “made him gulp” because he wished he wasn’t selling them.

Speaking in the new issue of Guitar Player, Knopfler details the mixed feelings he experienced when saying goodbye to some of his treasured six-strings.

“I must admit, there were a couple of things that made me gulp a little bit and wish that I was taking them home with me,” he says. “But at the same time, I’m happy.”

“You can’t just have them gathering dust. It was nice to unload them. It felt good to get them moving and to go on to find other homes and make new friends. And I realised, of course, I’d become a collector, which I never thought of myself as being.”

That said, there is still one instrument you’d be hard-pressed to pry from Knopfler’s hands – his 1961 Stratocaster that he wrote Sultans of Swing with in 1977. The guitar is Knopfler’s first Strat, and has accompanied him through his career ever since.

“Yeah, I still have that,” he says.

Asked what it would take to separate him from the Strat, Knopfler muses: “I’d say a pretty strong guy — or a pretty tough-minded gang of guys. It won’t go easy.”

Elsewhere, Knopfler also revealed that plans were underway for an album with the legendary Jeff Beck before his passing last January.

“Jeff was just something other, y’know? In fact, we’d just begun some talks, through management, about doing an album together. I’m really sorry we didn’t get to work together,” he said.