Fleetwood Mac – Rumours

In an article by guitar builder Rick Turner, he recounts his time working with Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac stating;

my main contribution during Rumours was installing an Alembic 'Stratoblaster' in his Strat exactly like the one I’d put in Lowell George’s guitar, the one you hear on Little Feat’s live album, Waiting for Columbus. For Lindsey, the sound of the electric on Rumours is his guitar with the ‘Blaster gain all the way up, basically destroying a succession of HiWatt amps.

In this picture, one can see Lindsey Buckingham playing a Stratocaster fitted with a Alembic Blaster (Could be the 59 Strat Ken's talking about, but appears to have a 65 Stratocaster Neck) it was used for the Rumours Tour on "Over My Head" in Open-D, Buckingham has multiple Strats, in a Guitar Player Magazine from 1977 he mentions to have a 63 Hybrid Strat, which is a 1963 Hardtail Stratocaster Body, been refinshed Black and Buckingham has stripped the paint, and has a 1965 Fender Stratocaster Neck (also fitted with a Alembic Blaster), the 63 Hybrid Strat has probably been on every Mac Record that Buckingham has recorded on, Probably both of those Strats have been used on the Rumours Sessions, Buckingham has also been seen with a Natural Stratocaster on stage with Richard Dashut from 1984, as well as two White Stratocasters on the Say You Will Tour 03-04, it seems to be used on "Tusk", one of them has had a Roland Synth Pickup (GR50??), in the Video "Lindsey Buckingham - Solo Anthology Unboxing Video" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hDO0sCvFTY, Buckingham is seen with a Black Stratocaster Copy, a Sunburst Stratocaster also fitted with a Roland Pickup, and his 63 Hybrid Stratocaster

In the book "Making Rumours: The Inside Story of the Classic Fleetwood Mac Album" by Ken Caillat and Steve Stiefel, it is mentioned that Buckingham used Stratocasters during the recording of "Rumours". (page 70)

Then the fun began. All of the members of the band went out into the studio’s recording area on the other side of the large double-sided glass separating the control room from the studio, and sat down at their starting instruments: Mick with his eight-inch Ludwig snare, John with his Fender Bassman, and Christine at her Hammond B3 organ. Lindsey chose his 1959 Fender Stratocaster, and Stevie picked up her tambourine, festooned with long black ribbons.

Lindsey Buckingham is seen using what appears to be a 1975 Gibson Les Paul Custom in black during the 1977 Rumours Tour, particularly on "Monday Morning." This guitar was later replaced by an early '50s Telecaster in Nashville the same year but continued to serve as a backup to a white Les Paul Custom until the tour concluded in November 1977. The image on Tumblr provides visual evidence of this usage.

In a user-uploaded photo on Tumblr, Lindsey Buckingham is seen playing a 1970s Dobro OM-1 "Redneck." The positioning of his fingers and the capo on the second fret suggest it may be the same guitar used on "The Chain."

Lindsey Buckingham used a Morley VOL Volume Pedal during Fleetwood Mac's Rumours Tour in 1977-1978, as evidenced by a photo showing the pedal to his right. This pedal is likely the one used for the studio recordings of "Dreams" and "Oh Daddy" on the Rumours album.

According to Rumours producer Ken Caillat, an ECM-50 was used to record guitar on "Dreams" and "Silver Spring". This is stated in his book Making Rumours: The Inside Story of the Classic Fleetwood Mac Album and this August 2007 Sound on Sound interview, respectively.

Making Rumours: The Inside Story of the Classic Fleetwood Mac Album (April 10, 2012)

I opened up the mics, a Neuman 414, an AKG C-451, panned hard left and right, and my little Sony ECM-50, taped to the front of Lindsey’s fine guitar.

Sound on Sound, August 2007

"Take 'Silver Springs' [the B-side of 'Go Your Own Way']. I taped this Sony ECM50 lavalier mic onto Lindsey's Fender Strat, which was kind of a crazy idea because no sound would be coming out of there. However, I noticed, when he would sit around and play in the studio, that I liked the sound of the high frequency that comes off the strings — it's hardly a note, but more of a second-octave, third-octave harmonic thing. So I taped the ECM50 on there and he was actually playing the part through his volume pedal, meaning that when he plucked the string and opened up the pedal you'd hear this 'wah' sound', while preceding that there would be the little glassy clink of the ECM50. Then we ran the pedal sound through the Leslie and had a delay on that, slowing his part down — he was actually going to double that part, but then when he heard the delay he started playing along to it and that changed the whole tempo of the song... You wouldn't have had that in the Pro Tools world, where there's no credibility given to putting some space into the songs. Back then, you'd put echo on there and create space, and you were painting a portrait while you were going."

Used for the guitar on Rumours, as stated by producer Ken Caillat in this August 2007 Sound on Sound interview.

"For Lindsey I always used an SM57 and a 451. I found that those two mics complemented each other, and if I put the 57 about an inch from the cloth and the 451 about two inches from the speaker, a little off to the side, and then moved the two faders up and down both together and independently, I could change the sound radically. And you'd get a really interesting sound if you also put phase on one of them. Added to that there was always a direct, although I didn't use that so much with Lindsey unless we were feeding a Leslie with it. We had everything mic'd up for whatever effects we wanted.

Used for the guitar on Rumours, as stated by producer Ken Caillat in this August 2007 Sound on Sound interview.

"For Lindsey I always used an SM57 and a 451. I found that those two mics complemented each other, and if I put the 57 about an inch from the cloth and the 451 about two inches from the speaker, a little off to the side, and then moved the two faders up and down both together and independently, I could change the sound radically. And you'd get a really interesting sound if you also put phase on one of them. Added to that there was always a direct, although I didn't use that so much with Lindsey unless we were feeding a Leslie with it. We had everything mic'd up for whatever effects we wanted.

Lindsey Buckingham used a Shure 58 Live on the White Album tour 75/76 and Part of the Rumours Tour in 1977, All three singers used 58s in 1975 and most of 1976

John Mcvie playing a Ernie Ball Earthwood it was used from 76-82? i believe it was used for Never Going Back Again & Songbird and a couple of other songs

If you scroll to the notable instruments section of this article you can see where it says John uses a Fender Precision bass

In this video you can see John McVie playing his Alembic bass at 2:50.

Used as overheads on Rumours, as stated by producer Ken Caillat in this August 2007 Sound on Sound interview.

In terms of the miking, Mick Fleetwood's kit was recorded with two AKG 451s overhead, an AKG C414 with a 20dB pad on the snare, dynamic mics for the toms and a Sennheiser 441 on the kick.

"Mick was always a fanatic for headphones," Caillat remarks. "He had to hear everything perfectly through them, so I'd have an assistant dedicated to just taking care of them. He had to be able to hear the part to play the part, and he was a really heavy hitter of everything except the kick drum. We used to call him 'Feather Foot', because there'd be these tremendous snare and tom hits while the kick was going 'pfff-pfff, pfff-pfff.' In fact, if you solo'd the kick you could hear him going, 'Ag, ag, ag, ag,' all the time he was playing. It was loud enough to come through the kick drum, and you couldn't hear anything else with the gates on the snare and so on.

Used for the snare on Rumours, as stated by producer Ken Caillat in this August 2007 Sound on Sound interview.

In terms of the miking, Mick Fleetwood's kit was recorded with two AKG 451s overhead, an AKG C414 with a 20dB pad on the snare, dynamic mics for the toms and a Sennheiser 441 on the kick.

"Mick was always a fanatic for headphones," Caillat remarks. "He had to hear everything perfectly through them, so I'd have an assistant dedicated to just taking care of them. He had to be able to hear the part to play the part, and he was a really heavy hitter of everything except the kick drum. We used to call him 'Feather Foot', because there'd be these tremendous snare and tom hits while the kick was going 'pfff-pfff, pfff-pfff.' In fact, if you solo'd the kick you could hear him going, 'Ag, ag, ag, ag,' all the time he was playing. It was loud enough to come through the kick drum, and you couldn't hear anything else with the gates on the snare and so on.

The initial recording of Rumours predates the release of the C414EB that same year.

Used for the bass drum on Rumours, as stated by producer Ken Caillat in this August 2007 Sound on Sound interview.

In terms of the miking, Mick Fleetwood's kit was recorded with two AKG 451s overhead, an AKG C414 with a 20dB pad on the snare, dynamic mics for the toms and a Sennheiser 441 on the kick.

"Mick was always a fanatic for headphones," Caillat remarks. "He had to hear everything perfectly through them, so I'd have an assistant dedicated to just taking care of them. He had to be able to hear the part to play the part, and he was a really heavy hitter of everything except the kick drum. We used to call him 'Feather Foot', because there'd be these tremendous snare and tom hits while the kick was going 'pfff-pfff, pfff-pfff.' In fact, if you solo'd the kick you could hear him going, 'Ag, ag, ag, ag,' all the time he was playing. It was loud enough to come through the kick drum, and you couldn't hear anything else with the gates on the snare and so on.

Used for the keyboards on Rumours, as stated by producer Ken Caillat in this August 2007 Sound on Sound interview.

"For Lindsey I always used an SM57 and a 451. I found that those two mics complemented each other, and if I put the 57 about an inch from the cloth and the 451 about two inches from the speaker, a little off to the side, and then moved the two faders up and down both together and independently, I could change the sound radically. And you'd get a really interesting sound if you also put phase on one of them. Added to that there was always a direct, although I didn't use that so much with Lindsey unless we were feeding a Leslie with it. We had everything mic'd up for whatever effects we wanted.

"The same applied to the keyboards — a grand piano, Rhodes, Wurlitzer and [Hammond] B3. Pretty much all of the electronic stuff was recorded direct, but again we'd have an amp in another room in case we wanted that sound on a keyboard. It all depended. We had plenty of time, so when they started playing we'd dial up everything. You know, 'Let's put a little amp on that. It'll fill out the sound better.' Basically, it was like we were mixing while we were recording."

Used for the keyboards on Rumours, as stated by producer Ken Caillat in this August 2007 Sound on Sound interview.

"For Lindsey I always used an SM57 and a 451. I found that those two mics complemented each other, and if I put the 57 about an inch from the cloth and the 451 about two inches from the speaker, a little off to the side, and then moved the two faders up and down both together and independently, I could change the sound radically. And you'd get a really interesting sound if you also put phase on one of them. Added to that there was always a direct, although I didn't use that so much with Lindsey unless we were feeding a Leslie with it. We had everything mic'd up for whatever effects we wanted.

"The same applied to the keyboards — a grand piano, Rhodes, Wurlitzer and [Hammond] B3. Pretty much all of the electronic stuff was recorded direct, but again we'd have an amp in another room in case we wanted that sound on a keyboard. It all depended. We had plenty of time, so when they started playing we'd dial up everything. You know, 'Let's put a little amp on that. It'll fill out the sound better.' Basically, it was like we were mixing while we were recording."

She's been using this mic since forever. Fits her voice very well.