Bon Scott singing in the Studio with a Neumann U47 FET

Stevie Nicks is confirmed to use the Neumann U47 FET microphone, as evidenced by a video posted on Instagram by user "goldduststevie," which shows her recording “How Still My Love” in 1981 with this specific microphone.

In this screenshot from Zayn's snapchat (zayn) where he is recording PILLOWTALK - the living room session, he is using a Neumann U47 Microphone.

In this photo you can see Pablo recording for 31 Minutes with a Neumann U47 FET microphone.

Jonathan Gallant uses the Neumann U47 FET microphone for studio recordings, as shown in a photo shared by Billy Talent on Facebook.

Used for vocals on Murmur and Reckoning, as recalled by producer Mitch Easter in the following sources. It also appears in the music video for "So. Central Rain" starting at 0:08.

Mix Online, February 1, 2009

Mills’ bass amp was miked with a Neumann FET U47 from eight or so feet away, according to Dixon, who says he spent more time on vocals for Reckoning than on anything else. He often gave Stipe a ride to the studio about noon, and they would sing for a few hours in the quiet studio, replacing scratch vocals from the previous day.

“We had Michael sing into a FET 47 — the transistor version of the famous 47 — and it sounded great. It had a good forwardness about it,” Easter says. “The processing on Michael, the thing that seemed to be the magic formula, was a touch of this thing called the EXR Exciter. It was one of those mystery treble-boosting things, and that gave him a touch of brightness.” Also included in Stipe’s vocal chain were a DeltaLab delay, set to only about 16 milliseconds, and a UREI 1176 compressor.

Sound on Sound, November 2009

Standing on the left side of the studio, Peter Buck used Easter's own Ampeg, wide open without gobos and miked with an EV 635 or, for some overdubs, a compressed Neumann U47 FET. Meanwhile, a second FET 47 was used for Michael Stipe's vocals, which he recorded standing on the landing of a staircase positioned just below the control room and above a recreational basement area. "He still had this thing of loving to be invisible,” remarks Easter, "and so he'd go there, turn off all the lights and sing.”

Vintage King, June 11, 2019

For the vocals, we used a Neumann U47 FET, and I think a lot of the selection was made by Michael Stipe. He saw the mic sitting there with its perfectly spherical windscreen and said, “That’s cute, let’s use that one.” It just so happened that the U47 was the perfect microphone for his voice. The u47 has a bit of a lift in the upper mids, which brought out the gravelly sound of his voice really well.

The rest of it was really straight-forward. Back then, no one used outboard mic pres. You had an expensive professional console and that’s why you had it. So we just used the MCI console preamp with an 1176 to compress it on the way in.

We tried to come up with a signature vocal sound for that record, which was done by adding an EXR Exciter coming back off the tape. The EXR was sort of an Aphex Exciter copy. We also used these DeltaLab delays, not the blue Effectrons that people remember, but these black DL1 delays that cost more and had XLR connections. It had these two toggle switches that would adjust the delay times in tiny increments; the max delay was like 128 ms. It had two channels so you could set two short delays, which we dialed in to be THE Michael Stipe sound.

If there was any reverb it would have been an EMT 140. The studio had Lexicon 224s and all the new digital stuff, but we thought the 140 sounded better. We used the digital units as special effects for a splatter on the snare drum or something, which was very fashionable at the time. It was all a very late ‘70s kind of approach."

In this photo taken from International Musician & Recording World March 1984 issue, Nik Kershaw can be seen singing into a Neumann U47 microphone.

"I don't ever use dynamic mics on a drum kit if I can help it: it'll either be ribbons or condensers. The exception would be an [Electro?voice] RE20 inside the kick, but I tend to try to use a [Neumann] U87 or 47 outside, and a Yamaha NS10 driver on the bottom. I try to line them up equidistant, so that theoretically it would always phase?align. I'll use [Neumann] KM84s on snare, top and bottom."

Used for the bass drum on "Beggin", as described by Alessandro Marcantoni in this October 2021 Sound on Sound interview.

Working from memory, old gear lists and photos, and the track names in his mix session for ‘Beggin’, Marcantoni retraces his steps, both for the recordings and the mixing. “For the kick I would have used a Shure Beta 52A on the inside, a Neumann U47 [FET] on the outside, and a Royer Labs R‑122 placed close to the kick drum pointing to the snare, for a mono drum kit track. On the snare I used a Shure SM57 at the top, and a Shure Beta 57 at the bottom. I duplicated the top snare track to create another effect setting for the rimshots.

“In addition I had one Neumann KM‑184 for hi‑hat and another KM‑184 for the ride cymbal, a couple of AKG C414 XLII mics as overheads, and two Neumann U87s for ambience. The toms had Beyerdynamic Opus 87 mics. I would have avoided the Yamaha desk for the recording chains, so the mics would have gone through external mic pres. I most likely would have used API 512C’s for the kick and the snare, and Focusrite ISA 828/430 for the other drum tracks. They would have gone into the Apogee Symphony MkI, and the Avid HD I/O.

Used on "Linger", as mentioned by producer Stephen Street in this March 2019 Sound on Sound interview.

"I might have used a [Neumann] U47 FET inside the bass drum." (...) Similarly, Mike Hogan's bass rig was very much of its era. "He was using a Wal bass at the time," Noel remembers. "He had bought it from a guy here in Ireland who'd got all the parts from Wal and built it himself. He had an Ampeg [SVT] cab at the time. That was pretty standard for the '90s. If you got a bit of money, it was a no?brainer."

"We definitely would've taken a DI," says Street. "But then it would've also been an [Electro-Voice] RE-20 and U47 on the cab and then play around until it felt right in terms of the phase and so on. But relatively close to the cab."

From the official Neumann website:

"The list of renowned artists who have created musical masterpieces with the sound of the U 47 fet – including AC/DC, Kate Bush, Bruce Springsteen, and later R.E.M, the Pretenders, a-ha, Dire Straits, Metallica, Michael Bublé and many others – can now grow longer ..."

John Paul Jones' bass parts were re-amped through Alan Moulder's custom Audio Kitchen bass amp, miked with a Neumann U47 FET