Gear Timeline
In 1979, Rick Turner finished the first three prototypes of the Model 1 guitar and contacted Lindsey Buckingham’s tech to arrange a meeting. Turner arrived at the Hollywood rehearsal space before the band, left the guitar plugged in on a stand in front of Buckingham’s amplifiers, walked to the back of the room with the tech, and waited. Buckingham arrived, went up on stage, picked up the guitar, and played it for approximately thirty minutes before the rest of the band arrived. “I thought it sounded fantastic — exactly the sound I’d had in my head when I first started designing the guitar,” Turner later wrote. Buckingham eventually told Turner what he wanted when he commissioned the guitar: “the warmth I liked in Les Pauls and SGs with the clarity that comes from a Strat, and then I wanted to put a kind of acoustic overlay on that sound.” The Model 1 delivered all three simultaneously, in a single instrument, on first contact. He has used it for more than forty-five years.
Lindsey Buckingham is the guitarist who never used a pick. More precisely: he is one of the most commercially successful rock guitarists in history, whose technical contribution to Fleetwood Mac’s most celebrated recordings was entirely made using his bare fingers — thumb on the bass strings, middle and ring fingers on the treble strings, fingernails grown slightly for added attack — and who, when Fleetwood Mac asked him to use a pick when he joined in 1975, declined. “When Fleetwood Mac asked me to join, they actually did try to get me to use a pick. But I was 25 then, and I’d been playing for about 19 years. My style was pretty much written in stone.” His style has remained written in stone ever since. The fingerpicking is as immediately recognizable as the Turner Model 1, and together they constitute the sonic identity of the most commercially successful album in Fleetwood Mac’s history.
Born Lindsey Adams Buckingham on October 3, 1949, in Palo Alto, California, he grew up in the specific cultural moment of the early 1960s folk boom and developed his guitar style from the specific combination of influences it provided: Chet Atkins’ Travis-style three-finger picking, the Kingston Trio’s folk guitar vocabulary, Elvis Presley’s guitarist Scotty Moore’s orchestral fingerstyle approach. These are not rock guitar influences in the conventional sense; they produced a guitarist who brought fingerpicking sophistication to a rock context in a way that had no precedent. Rumours (1977), for which he served as primary guitarist, producer, and principal arranger, has sold over 40 million copies worldwide and won the Grammy for Album of the Year. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Fleetwood Mac in 1998. Rolling Stone ranked him among the 100 greatest guitarists. He is, in the direct words of his guitar philosophy, “in service of the song.”
Background: From Buckingham Nicks to Rumours and Beyond
The specific path that brought Lindsey Buckingham to Fleetwood Mac begins with Mick Fleetwood visiting Sound City recording studio in San Fernando Valley in late 1974, looking for a recording space for Fleetwood Mac’s next album. The studio’s engineer, Keith Olsen, played Fleetwood a recording he was proud of to demonstrate the room’s acoustics. The recording was “Frozen Love” — a track from the Buckingham Nicks album, a commercial failure that Buckingham and his then-partner Stevie Nicks had recorded at Sound City in 1973. Fleetwood was sufficiently impressed by the guitar playing to ask who it was. When he learned that Buckingham was recording demos in the same building at that exact moment, a meeting was arranged. When Bob Welch departed Fleetwood Mac in December 1974, Fleetwood called Buckingham and offered him the job. Buckingham’s response — that he and Nicks were a team and he didn’t want to work without her — led Fleetwood to hire both, without an audition. The rest is one of the more remarkable commercial stories in rock history.
His role in Fleetwood Mac was immediately more complex than “lead guitarist.” Buckingham had been a home recording obsessive since before the Buckingham Nicks album — experimenting with an Ampeg four-track, using a Sony two-track for slap echo and fuzz effects, building the kind of self-taught studio intelligence that would make him the primary architect of the Rumours sound. When Fleetwood Mac brought him in, he brought not just his guitar playing but his producer’s ear, his arranger’s instincts, and his commitment to the studio as a compositional space rather than a performance documentation facility. “I think of myself as a stylist, and the process of writing a song is part and parcel with putting it together in the studio,” he said.
The Rumours sessions — documented extensively in the book Making Rumours by engineer Ken Caillat — were both creatively extraordinary and personally catastrophic. Buckingham and Nicks’ romantic relationship was dissolving. Christine and John McVie were divorcing. The band’s personal turmoil fed directly into the songs, which became among the most emotionally direct and commercially appealing in rock history. Buckingham’s production instincts — his ability to hear what a song needed, to arrange it for maximum emotional impact, to perform his own parts with the specific combination of technical precision and raw energy that the songs required — are audible throughout. “The Chain,” “Go Your Own Way,” “Go Your Own Way,” “Never Going Back Again” — these are not just great songs. They are exceptionally produced recordings in which every element, including the guitar, is precisely in its correct place.
His departures from Fleetwood Mac — in 1987 (to pursue solo work) and in 2018 (fired, after Stevie Nicks gave the other band members an ultimatum) — frame a solo career that has produced seven studio albums of genuine artistic ambition. Out of the Cradle (1992), Gift of Screws (2008), Seeds We Sow (2011), and the self-titled 2021 album (written partly before and after heart surgery in 2019) all demonstrate the songwriter and producer’s intelligence applied to work that doesn’t have to serve the commercial requirements of a 40-million-album legacy. The 2021 album specifically addressed his health crisis and his dismissal from Fleetwood Mac with the directness of someone who has been through both and has enough distance to make music from them. He had open-heart surgery in February 2019 that resulted in temporary vocal cord damage. He recovered. He made the album. He keeps playing.
The Rig: Lindsey Buckingham’s Guitars, Amps, and Effects
Guitars
The Rick Turner Model 1 is the instrument most closely identified with Lindsey Buckingham and the one that has defined his electric guitar sound for more than forty-five years. Its origin story, told above, begins with the gap between what he needed and what was available: Buckingham joined Fleetwood Mac needing a guitar that combined the warmth of a Les Paul, the clarity of a Stratocaster, and something of the acoustic character that his fingerpicking technique invoked. The Telecaster he had been using didn’t quite fit the band’s sound; the Les Paul Custom he briefly used when he first joined also didn’t fully work. Rick Turner — who had been building guitars at Alembic before starting his own company — designed the Model 1 specifically to meet these requirements.
The Model 1’s construction reflects Turner’s specific design philosophy: a mahogany body with no maple cap (like the original Les Paul Custom) for warmth and sustain; a body shape with non-parallel surfaces to minimize standing waves; a piezo pickup underneath the saddle alongside the magnetic pickup, with a powerful 18-volt preamp that makes the instrument’s output signal strong and bright; and an overall design that Turner described as wanting to feel like “lemon butter — rich with a tangy touch.” The guitar is reportedly “one of the most sensitive and responsive six-strings ever built, designed to follow the player’s every move” — a quality that suits Buckingham’s dynamic fingerpicking style, where the attack velocity of individual finger strikes produces significant tonal variation.
Buckingham keeps three Turner Model 1 guitars on tour: his #1 model that he has used since the 1970s, and two others set up with different tunings. Backup instruments are maintained for each. The guitar’s tech, Stanley Lamendola, described it simply: “You can’t get away with anything with this guitar.” This accountability — the instrument’s sensitivity exposing every technical choice rather than hiding it — suits Buckingham’s approach to guitar as a precision compositional tool rather than a tone-generator. His statement in the Premier Guitar interview captures it: “The cleanliness is helpful if you’re trying to approach guitar work in service of a song.”
Before joining Fleetwood Mac, the Telecaster was Buckingham’s primary electric guitar — well suited to his fingerstyle approach for its clarity and clean response. “Before I joined Fleetwood Mac, I’d been using a Stratocaster, which was very well suited to the finger style I had” — this quote from Premier Guitar suggests Stratocasters were also in the mix; the Guitar Player 1977 interview confirms a “63 Hybrid Strat” (a 1963 hardtail Stratocaster body, refinished black and paint stripped, fitted with a 1965 Fender Stratocaster neck and an Alembic Blaster) as a primary instrument. The Telecaster and Stratocasters were used during the Rumours sessions — specifically, the Rumours book documents: “Lindsey chose his 1959 Fender Stratocaster.” Buckingham had multiple Strats, and their specific chimey, clear, single-coil character suited his fingerpicking approach during this period.
When Buckingham initially joined Fleetwood Mac, he used a Gibson Les Paul Custom — the three-humbucker “Black Beauty” configuration that provided the fuller, thicker tone that John McVie and Mick Fleetwood preferred from a guitarist following Peter Green’s Les Paul legacy. This was the guitar he used briefly before the dissatisfaction with the tonal compromise led him to Rick Turner. “Initially after joining Fleetwood Mac, Buckingham used a Gibson Les Paul Custom” per Wikipedia — a transitional instrument that didn’t last long before the Turner replaced it.
For live performances of “Big Love” — the 1987 Fleetwood Mac track that is essentially a solo acoustic guitar piece, built from a Buckingham fingerpicking pattern that creates the illusion of a full band from a single instrument — Buckingham uses a custom-made Gibson Chet Atkins acoustic guitar. “Lindsey rips through a version of Fleetwood Mac’s hit ‘Big Love’ on a synth-loaded Gibson Chet Atkins acoustic in this gorgeous, often close-up, study of technique and tone,” per Premier Guitar. The Gibson Chet Atkins model features a piezo-based system that outputs directly without requiring a microphone, allowing its live reproduction to capture the full dynamic range of Buckingham’s fingerpicking with studio-quality clarity.
Buckingham’s primary acoustic-electric guitar for most live and studio applications is the Taylor 814ce — a dreadnought cutaway with Indian rosewood back and sides, Sitka spruce top, and Fishman Prefix electronics. The 814ce’s balanced response, comfortable access to upper frets (via the cutaway), and reliable electronics make it ideal for his touring requirements. He uses light gauge phosphor bronze strings for their playability and clarity in his fingerstyle approach.
The Rick Turner Renaissance RS6 — a nylon-string guitar from Turner’s Renaissance line that combines classical guitar tonewoods with modern construction techniques — has appeared in Buckingham’s acoustic performances since approximately 2003, serving as an alternative to the Taylor 814ce for nylon-string sounds. The Renaissance’s warm, classical guitar character provides a different acoustic tonal palette from the steel-string Taylor.
Buckingham used an Ovation Balladeer from the early 1970s through the late 1980s — the round-backed, synthetic-bowl acoustic-electric that was a standard professional touring instrument of the era. The Ovation’s built-in pickup and its resistance to feedback at stage volumes made it practical for live performance at a time when acoustic guitar amplification was less sophisticated than it is today.
Amps
Lindsey Buckingham switched to Mesa Boogie in October 1977 — just months after the release of Rumours — and used the Mark I models from 1977 through 1995. The Mesa/Boogie Mark I’s specific qualities suit Buckingham’s approach with precision: it provides clean headroom even at high volumes, responding dynamically to subtle changes in attack. This dynamic response — the amp’s sensitivity to the varying force of individual finger strikes in his fingerpicking technique — is not incidental. A guitar player who creates the illusion of multiple musicians from a single instrument needs an amplifier whose own response is as sensitive as the technique that feeds it. The Mark I’s clean channel is also what allows the fingerpicking’s specific bass/treble separation to remain audible at performance volumes.
In approximately 1976, Buckingham used a Marshall Super Lead 1959 amp head — the classic plexi-era Marshall — paired with the Gibson Les Paul Custom during his early Fleetwood Mac period. This was the period when the band expected him to adapt to the heavier, blues-rock tone of the Peter Green tradition; the Marshall represented that aesthetic attempt. The Gibson Les Paul and Marshall combination quickly gave way to the Turner Model 1 and Mesa/Boogie combination that defined his mature sound.
Buckingham has continued using Mesa/Boogie amplifiers across his career. “For live performances, Lindsey typically runs a stereo setup with two Mesa/Boogie amplifiers.” The Mesa/Boogie’s consistent clean headroom and dynamic sensitivity have remained appropriate to his technical requirements across multiple generations of Mesa products.
Effects
The most revealing statement Buckingham has made about effects: “Though not afraid to kick in his trusty Boss SD-1 for leads, it is layers of sparkling cleans that define his guitar’s voice.” The Boss SD-1 Super Overdrive appears in his signal chain not as a constant element but as a specific resource for lead passages — and even then, used with restraint consistent with his philosophy that “cleanliness is helpful if you’re trying to approach guitar work in service of a song.” The SD-1’s mild, asymmetric clipping adds sustain and harmonic complexity to his lead lines without the heavy saturation that would obscure the fingerpicking technique’s articulation.
One of the more unusual effects in any guitarist’s history: Buckingham used the preamp output of a Sony two-track tape machine as a fuzz device for his early Fleetwood Mac recordings. “I got an Ampeg four-track and started using the Sony two-track for slap echo and effects like that with the preamp output of the deck into an amp. It’s just an amazing fuzz device. Since then I’ve taken the guts out of the preamp and put them in a little box, and that’s what I use both onstage and in the studio.” This extracted preamp circuit — essentially a DIY effects pedal made from the guts of a Sony tape machine — was his primary drive effect for years. When this device failed on tour in August 1980, the tone changed noticeably; his tech eventually identified the Boss OD-1 OverDrive as a replacement that approximate the Sony circuit’s character.
The Roland Space Echo — a tape-based delay unit that was one of the most musically expressive echo machines of the 1970s — appeared in Buckingham’s early Fleetwood Mac setup. He specifically mentioned it in the 1977 Guitar Player interview: “I also use a Roland Space Echo and a Cry Baby wah.” The Space Echo’s warm, tape-based echo character added spatial depth to his clean guitar parts in a way that modern digital delay approximates but doesn’t fully replicate.
The Cry Baby wah — referenced in the same 1977 Guitar Player interview — appears in Buckingham’s early setup for specific passages where the filter sweep added expressiveness. His wah use was always selective rather than constant, consistent with his overall philosophy of effects as specific tools rather than permanent sonic environment.
Buckingham used a Morley VOL volume pedal during the Rumours tour — likely the volume controller for the specific swell effects on “Dreams” and “Oh Daddy” from the Rumours album, where gradual volume increases and decreases are part of the guitar’s textural contribution to the arrangement.
In his more recent performance configurations, Buckingham uses a Voodoo Lab Pedal Switcher for amp selection and signal routing — allowing him to switch between his two Mesa/Boogie amplifiers and manage effects routing with professional-grade switching infrastructure.
As important as any specific pedal is Buckingham’s use of direct recording in his studio work — recording the guitar signal directly to tape or digital rather than through a microphone on a speaker cabinet. This approach, which eliminates the sonic character of the microphone and room from the recorded guitar, gives his studio guitar parts the specific clarity and immediacy that defines the Fleetwood Mac records. When asked about his clean tone philosophy, he cited this directly: “The cleanliness is helpful if you’re trying to approach guitar work in service of a song.” Direct recording is the extreme expression of this philosophy.
Playing Style & Tone Philosophy
Lindsey Buckingham’s playing style is built on an unusual combination for a rock guitarist: the fingerpicking vocabulary of the folk and country traditions, applied to electric guitar with rock energy and within a rock production context. His technique creates the specific illusion that has defined his contribution to Fleetwood Mac recordings: the sense that multiple guitar parts are present when only one guitar is playing, because his thumb handles bass lines while his fingers handle melody and rhythm simultaneously.
The technique’s origins are in the Travis-style three-finger picking he absorbed from Scotty Moore, Chet Atkins, and the folk boom of the early 1960s. “My early education came from a chord book and my older brother’s Elvis 45s. Scotty Moore was one of the earliest players I was aware of, and he’d often employ fingerstyle to get that Travis roll going. I was also into the banjo and dug how bluegrass players with metal fingerpicks and plastic thumbpicks could get serious velocity going. I think all of that found its way into my playing.” This is the complete genealogy: Elvis’s guitarist, bluegrass banjo players, and folk guitar, all synthesized into a rock guitar approach that nobody else was using in the mid-1970s.
His fingernails — grown slightly longer than normal, in the classical guitar tradition — provide the additional attack and clarity that the technique requires. Where a flatpick’s hard plastic edge produces a consistent, hard attack on each note, Buckingham’s fingernails produce attacks that vary with the angle and force of each individual finger strike, creating the natural dynamic variation that gives his playing its specific textural complexity. The combination of different fingers applying different forces to different strings simultaneously produces a sound that a single guitar technically should not be able to produce alone — which is the point. “Big Love” is the extreme example: a solo guitar performance that sounds like a full band arrangement.
His tone philosophy is the most explicitly anti-flashy in this entire series of one hundred guitarists. He directly criticized the opposite approach by reference to Eddie Van Halen: “Eddie Van Halen, for instance. He was a brilliant guitarist. But you could make the case that he’s playing over the track and not into the track. If you really want to follow in the footsteps of the Scotty Moores or the Chet Atkinses, who always are in service of making a better record out of a song, then I think cleanliness is helpful.” This is not a dismissal of Van Halen’s abilities — he specifically acknowledged them. It is a statement of different values: the guitar that serves the song versus the guitar that competes with it. Buckingham’s entire career is the argument that the former is the more difficult and the more valuable.
His role as producer — which has been as important as his role as guitarist in defining the Fleetwood Mac sound — reflects the same philosophy. He has said: “I think of myself as a stylist, and the process of writing a song is part and parcel with putting it together in the studio.” This producer’s relationship with songwriting means that every guitar part he plays has been conceived as part of an arrangement, not as an improvised performance over a finished track. He knows where every instrument will sit before he records the guitar, which means the guitar’s specific frequency range, volume, and tonal character are pre-designed to occupy the precise space that the arrangement has left for them. This is how Rumours sounds the way it sounds: not because the performances are unusually emotional or technically impressive (though some are), but because every element has been placed with architectural precision.
The direct recording approach — recording guitar straight to tape without a microphone on a speaker cabinet — is the technical expression of this philosophy. Direct recording captures the guitar’s signal with the purity of a close-up photograph, exposing every note, every dynamic variation, every tonal nuance without the softening and coloration of a room and a microphone. As his Turner Model 1’s tech noted: “You can’t get away with anything with this guitar.” Combined with direct recording, the combination of instrument and approach creates a sonic environment where technical precision is not optional but mandatory. Buckingham’s willingness to work in this environment — to build a career on an approach that exposes rather than conceals — is one of the defining professional commitments in the history of rock guitar.
How to Sound Like Lindsey Buckingham
Getting the Lindsey Buckingham tone is unusual in that the primary requirement is not equipment-based but technique-based: you need the fingerpicking. The Mesa/Boogie clean platform, the Turner Model 1’s specific tonal character, the Boss SD-1 for leads — all of this is accessible at various price points. But the fundamental sound comes from bare fingers on the strings, not from any amplifier or guitar.
Guitar: A Rick Turner Model 1 is the authentic choice and is available through Turner Guitars. For accessible alternatives: any guitar with a clear, bright, single-coil or single-coil-adjacent character — Fender Stratocaster, Telecaster, or a nylon-string acoustic with acoustic-electric capabilities for the “Never Going Back Again” material. The guitar’s clarity and touch-sensitivity matter more than specific pickup type.
Amp: Mesa/Boogie Mark series for the clean, responsive platform. The Mesa’s specific dynamic sensitivity to attack variations suits fingerpicking technique. For accessible alternatives: any clean, high-headroom tube amp (Fender Twin Reverb, Roland JC-120) that stays clean at performance volumes and responds dynamically to picking force variations. The key is not to add tube saturation. Buckingham’s drive comes from the Boss SD-1 when needed, not from the amplifier.
Amp Settings (Mesa/Boogie Mark I or equivalent clean amp):
| Control | Setting (0–10) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Volume | 5–7 | Clean — no breakup whatsoever |
| Bass | 4–5 | Controlled — fingerpicking bass lines provide their own low-end |
| Mid | 5–6 | Present but not nasal |
| Treble | 6–7 | Bright and clear — the fingernail attack needs this |
| Presence | 4–5 | Moderate — adds definition without harshness |
The Boss SD-1 for leads: Set the Drive control low-to-medium (not maximum), the Tone control at noon or slightly above for bright sustain, and the Level at unity or slightly above. This provides the mild overdrive that adds sustain and harmonic complexity to his lead lines without obscuring the fingerpicking clarity that is the foundation of everything.
Technique — the only thing that actually matters: Learn Travis-style three-finger picking. The thumb on the low strings (E, A, D), alternating in a steady bass pattern. The index, middle, and ring fingers on the treble strings (G, B, high E), playing melody and rhythm. Start very slowly. Develop bass-treble independence before attempting speed. The “Big Love” performance on YouTube — close-up footage of Buckingham playing the song live — is the single most instructive resource available for understanding what his right hand is doing and why the music sounds the way it does.
Influence & Legacy
Lindsey Buckingham’s influence on guitar playing is less about technique (few rock guitarists have adopted his specific fingerpicking approach) and more about philosophy: the guitarist in service of the song, the guitar as compositional material rather than technical display, the studio intelligence that builds arrangements from the ground up rather than adding guitar to a pre-existing track. These are values more than techniques, and they have influenced producers and singer-songwriter guitarists more than shredders or blues players.
His production work on Rumours and subsequent Fleetwood Mac albums is as important as his guitar playing in understanding his influence. The specific sonic architecture of those records — the layering of clean guitar parts, the use of direct recording for guitar clarity, the arrangement intelligence that places each instrument precisely — influenced the production aesthetic of commercial pop-rock for decades. Engineers and producers who studied those records absorbed Buckingham’s approach to guitar as a production element rather than just a performance element. He has won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year (Rumours, 1978) and received the Les Paul Innovation Award (2011, for pioneering work in guitar technique and studio production) — two recognitions that together span both the performance and production dimensions of his achievement.
His specific contribution to fingerstyle rock guitar — the demonstration that complex, multi-voice fingerpicking could function as the primary guitar approach in a commercially successful rock band, without ever compromising the finger technique for the sake of a more conventionally “rock” sound — is unique. No other guitarist of his commercial stature has maintained such an uncompromising commitment to a technique that is genuinely difficult and genuinely unreplicable by most rock players. Rumours has sold over 40 million copies. Every guitar on it was played with bare fingers. The song was all that mattered. The song always will be.
For context on how Buckingham fits in the folk-to-rock tradition that shaped his technique, the comparison with Chet Atkins’ foundational fingerpicking approach at #71 is the most direct lineage — Atkins being one of Buckingham’s explicitly named formative influences, and the Travis-picking tradition Atkins helped define being the technical foundation of everything Buckingham subsequently did. The distance from Atkins’ Nashville country fingerpicking to Buckingham’s Fleetwood Mac rock fingerpicking is one of the more remarkable stylistic translations in the instrument’s history.
The comparison with Mark Knopfler’s fingerstyle approach to rock guitar at #17 illuminates the broader category of rock guitarists who chose fingers over pick — each arriving at a completely different technical approach and a completely different sonic identity from the same fundamental decision. Knopfler’s fingerstyle is more blues-influenced, more rhythmically complex, more clearly audible as a “fingerstyle” technique. Buckingham’s is more folk-influenced, more vertically integrated (bass and treble simultaneously), and more oriented toward the illusion of multiple instruments. Both are fundamental to the argument that fingerstyle belongs in rock guitar, and both demonstrate that the decision to not use a pick, made with specific musical intention and sustained over decades, produces something genuinely distinctive that pick-based playing cannot replicate. There is a generation of young guitarists who have watched the close-up “Big Love” performance videos and understood, for the first time, what fingers can do that picks cannot. Buckingham made those videos possible. He also made the music possible that made the videos worth watching.
And for the fullest context of what Buckingham’s production intelligence produced — the commercial and artistic legacy of Rumours — the comparison with Neil Young’s approach to clean-to-dirty guitar expression at #41 shows a parallel in the commitment to a specific guitar voice maintained across a long career despite commercial pressures in a different direction. Young’s commitment is to controlled rawness; Buckingham’s is to controlled cleanliness. Both are commitments that define careers rather than simply define sounds. The Turner Model 1 is still on stage. The Boss SD-1 is still in the signal chain for leads only. The fingers are still bare. The cleanliness is still helpful. The song is still all that matters.
In August 2019, Lindsey Buckingham had open-heart surgery. He survived. The temporary vocal cord damage from the surgery was a specific threat to a musician whose voice is as important as his guitar. He recovered that too. He made the 2021 solo album addressing the surgery and the Fleetwood Mac dismissal with directness and without self-pity. The Turner Model 1 is still the primary instrument. The fingerpicking technique is still intact. The Mesa/Boogie is still clean. At seventy-five years old in 2026, Lindsey Buckingham is still playing in service of the song. Some commitments, made firmly enough, survive everything.
Frequently Asked Questions: Lindsey Buckingham Guitars & Gear
What guitar does Lindsey Buckingham play?
Lindsey Buckingham’s primary electric guitar for over forty-five years has been the Rick Turner Model 1 — a custom-designed instrument that Turner created in 1979 to combine the warmth of a Les Paul, the clarity of a Stratocaster, and a degree of acoustic character. The Model 1 features a mahogany body, a piezo pickup under the saddle alongside a magnetic pickup, and an 18-volt preamp that provides a strong, bright output responsive to subtle picking dynamics. Buckingham keeps three Model 1 guitars on tour. Before the Turner, he used Fender Stratocasters and Telecasters, and briefly a Gibson Les Paul Custom when he first joined Fleetwood Mac. For acoustic work, he plays a Taylor 814ce (steel-string) and Rick Turner Renaissance RS6 (nylon-string). For “Big Love” live, he uses a custom Gibson Chet Atkins acoustic guitar.
Why did Rick Turner design the Model 1 for Lindsey Buckingham?
Rick Turner designed the Model 1 specifically because Lindsey Buckingham needed an instrument that combined qualities unavailable from any existing production guitar. When Buckingham joined Fleetwood Mac in 1975, his existing guitars — Fender Telecasters and Stratocasters — provided the clean, bright character his fingerpicking technique required, but didn’t satisfy the rhythm section’s preference for a warmer, fuller sound. Turner’s design goal was “the warmth I liked in Les Pauls and SGs with the clarity that comes from a Strat, and then I wanted to put a kind of acoustic overlay on that sound” — a specific combination that no single commercial instrument provided. The Model 1’s mahogany body (warm), single magnetic pickup with high-output 18-volt preamp (clear and bright), and piezo element (acoustic character) achieved all three simultaneously. Turner finished the first three prototypes in late 1979; Buckingham played the first one for thirty minutes at a Hollywood rehearsal space and adopted it immediately.
Does Lindsey Buckingham use a pick?
Lindsey Buckingham does not use a guitar pick. He plays exclusively fingerstyle, using his bare thumb, index, middle, and ring fingers to strike the strings — with his fingernails grown slightly longer than normal for additional attack and clarity. When Fleetwood Mac asked him to use a pick when he joined in 1975, he declined: “When Fleetwood Mac asked me to join, they actually did try to get me to use a pick. But I was 25 then, and I’d been playing for about 19 years. My style was pretty much written in stone.” His fingerpicking technique comes from the Travis-style three-finger picking he learned from studying Chet Atkins, Scotty Moore (Elvis Presley’s guitarist), and folk guitarists of the early 1960s.
What amp does Lindsey Buckingham use?
Lindsey Buckingham has used Mesa/Boogie amplifiers as his primary amplification since switching to Mesa in October 1977, just after the release of Rumours. He used Mesa/Boogie Mark I models from 1977 through 1995, and has continued with Mesa/Boogie amplifiers across subsequent touring. The Mesa/Boogie’s specific quality of remaining clean at high volumes while responding dynamically to subtle changes in attack makes it ideal for Buckingham’s fingerpicking technique, which creates significant dynamic variation between individual notes. He also briefly used a Marshall Super Lead 1959 during his initial period with Fleetwood Mac (approximately 1976) when the band expected him to adopt a heavier, blues-rock tone.
What effects does Lindsey Buckingham use?
Lindsey Buckingham’s effects setup is deliberately minimal. His primary drive effect is a Boss SD-1 Super Overdrive, used only for lead passages rather than as a constant element. He has historically used: Roland Space Echo (tape delay, early career), Dunlop Cry Baby wah (selective use), Morley VOL volume pedal (Rumours tour), and a custom DIY fuzz device made from a Sony two-track tape machine’s preamp circuit (used for years until it failed in 1980, later replaced by the Boss OD-1). In his current live setup, he uses a Voodoo Lab Pedal Switcher for amp selection and signal routing. He is known for using direct recording in the studio rather than miked amplifiers, which gives his recorded guitar parts their specific clarity and immediacy.
How was “Big Love” recorded and performed?
“Big Love” from the 1987 Fleetwood Mac album Tango in the Night is a solo acoustic guitar piece in which Lindsey Buckingham creates the illusion of a full band arrangement using only his bare fingers and a Gibson Chet Atkins acoustic guitar. The piece uses open tuning and a complex fingerpicking pattern that simultaneously handles bass lines (thumb), rhythm parts (middle finger), and melody (ring and index fingers) — creating what sounds like multiple instruments from a single guitar. For live performances, Buckingham uses the same Gibson Chet Atkins acoustic guitar with its direct-output piezo system. A close-up performance video exists on YouTube that has become one of the most-studied guitar technique demonstrations available for anyone wanting to understand exactly what his right hand is doing.
Is Lindsey Buckingham in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?
Yes. Lindsey Buckingham was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998 as a member of Fleetwood Mac. He was not present at the ceremony due to the ongoing tensions within the band. Fleetwood Mac’s induction recognized their commercial and cultural impact — particularly the Rumours album, which has sold over 40 million copies worldwide and won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1978. Buckingham received the Les Paul Innovation Award in 2011, recognizing his pioneering work in guitar technique and studio production. Rolling Stone ranked him among the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time. His firing from Fleetwood Mac in 2018 (following an ultimatum from Stevie Nicks) ended his most recent association with the band; as of 2026, he has stated he would be open to rejoining but does not foresee it.
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