The Chain

What is The Chain guitar tone?

The Chain guitar tone is a screaming, boosted Stratocaster solo over the closing bass line, heard on Fleetwood Mac's 1970s rock recording. It is a distorted solo tone, and Fleetwood Mac reportedly tracked it with a Fender Stratocaster that Alembic's Rick Turner fitted with his Stratoblaster onboard preamp booster after the band recorded its self-titled album, which Guitar Player says, with the Stratoblaster's gain at maximum and played through Hiwatt Custom 100 amps, became the celebrated guitar sound on Rumours; Wikipedia says the song began as Christine McVie's Keep Me There, the first track the band recorded for the album, with initial tracking on 2 February 1976 and Lindsey Buckingham on a Stratocaster with three microphones on his amplifiers, and that only the ending section of that recording survives: co-producer Ken Caillat told MusicRadar that John McVie found the bass line when the band ran through the song, the band started playing the big rocking tag, and out of nowhere Buckingham played a screaming guitar solo; the song stayed unfinished for the next nine months until, about three weeks before the album was done, Buckingham took the verses apart, played a Dobro, had Mick Fleetwood play a straight quarter-note kick drum and rewrote the chorus; Wikipedia adds that the drums and guitar were the only instruments recorded together, that the intro came from Buckingham Nicks' 1973 song Lola (My Love), that Stevie Nicks gave her lyrics to the verses, and that the parts were joined, often by splicing tape with a razor blade, at the Record Plant in Sausalito with Caillat and Richard Dashut; Caillat also describes a Stratoblaster in a metal box at the console that added about a 15 dB boost to anything fed through it; the only song credited to all five members of the Rumours lineup, it came out on Rumours on 4 February 1977. Here the bite comes from a booster built into the Stratocaster, run at full gain into Hiwatt amps, so the boost pushes the amp rather than a distortion pedal shaping the sound.

You do not need that exact gear to land in the same place. What carries this sound is the gain structure, the EQ curve, the pickup choice and the order of the effects, and all four can be rebuilt on equipment that costs a fraction of the original. The numbers change from amp to amp, because a high-gain head and a small practice amp reach the same voicing from different knob positions. That translation is what Tonelify works out for the rig you actually own.

What gear did Fleetwood Mac use on The Chain?

A Fender Stratocaster that Alembic's Rick Turner fitted with his Stratoblaster onboard preamp booster after the band recorded its self-titled album, which Guitar Player says, with the Stratoblaster's gain at maximum and played through Hiwatt Custom 100 amps, became the celebrated guitar sound on Rumours; Wikipedia says the song began as Christine McVie's Keep Me There, the first track the band recorded for the album, with initial tracking on 2 February 1976 and Lindsey Buckingham on a Stratocaster with three microphones on his amplifiers, and that only the ending section of that recording survives: co-producer Ken Caillat told MusicRadar that John McVie found the bass line when the band ran through the song, the band started playing the big rocking tag, and out of nowhere Buckingham played a screaming guitar solo; the song stayed unfinished for the next nine months until, about three weeks before the album was done, Buckingham took the verses apart, played a Dobro, had Mick Fleetwood play a straight quarter-note kick drum and rewrote the chorus; Wikipedia adds that the drums and guitar were the only instruments recorded together, that the intro came from Buckingham Nicks' 1973 song Lola (My Love), that Stevie Nicks gave her lyrics to the verses, and that the parts were joined, often by splicing tape with a razor blade, at the Record Plant in Sausalito with Caillat and Richard Dashut; Caillat also describes a Stratoblaster in a metal box at the console that added about a 15 dB boost to anything fed through it; the only song credited to all five members of the Rumours lineup, it came out on Rumours on 4 February 1977.

Sources: Guitar Player: Lindsey Buckingham on joining Fleetwood Mac and cutting their breakthrough album, MusicRadar: Ken Caillat on Rumours, track by track, Wikipedia: The Chain

Tonelify's tone matcher reads that chain and translates it to the amp and guitar you already own, returning gain, bass, mids, treble and presence values along with a pickup position.