Phil Collins Face Value equipment

Face Value is the debut studio album by Phil Collins, released in February 1981.

The album itself originated as a series of home recordings which Phil did at his Old Croft home in Shalford, Surrey in 1979. He and Genesis planned for a brief hiatus for the group in early 1979 so Phil could move to Vancouver and attempt to salvage his already failing marriage. However, in April 1979 he returned to England after his marriage disintegrated, and with plenty of time on his hands started writing and demoing songs at Old Croft. On the side he would also do recording work and/or live concerts with Brand X, John Martyn and Peter Gabriel (with whom he pioneered the gated reverb sound) before Genesis were scheduled to do Duke towards the end of the year. By then, Phil had a batch of songs but hadn't considered them for an album yet. Of those songs, the band chose "Misunderstanding" and "Please Don't Ask" for Duke.

Following the Duke tour in June 1980, Phil appears to have composed at least two additional songs, "This Must Be Love" and "Thunder And Lightning" after meeting future wife Jill Tavelman on tour, hence the lighter and more optimistic mood of those tracks. The main recording sessions took place between August and December 1980, when they transferred the 8-track demos to 24-track and did overdubs to them. Recordings took place at The Townhouse in London and The Village Recorder in New York, with engineer Hugh Padgham drafted in as engineer and assistant producer.

Phil Collins
Drums
 * Premier 717 Elite Black custom kit
 * Zildjian/Paiste cymbals

Misc.
 * Roland CR-78 CompuRhythm drum machine
 * Collard & Collard 6' grand piano
 * Fender Rhodes Stage 73 electric piano
 * Sequential Circuits Prophet-5 synth
 * Roland VP-330 Vocoder Plus synth
 * Moog Taurus I pedals

John Giblin

 * 1958 Fender Precision bass

Microphones
Vocals:
 * Drums:
 * STC 4021 Ball and Biscuit (Reverse Talkback mic)
 * Neumann U87s (drum room)
 * Neumann U47 (bass drum)
 * Shure SM57 (snare)
 * Sennheiser MD421s or condenser mics (Toms)
 * Beyerdynamic M88

Outboard equipment and processors

 * cheap guitar effects pedals
 * Allen & Heath Mini Limiters - from Phil's home studio
 * AMS DMX 15-80 delay
 * Eventide H910 Harmonizer
 * MXR digital delay - from Phil's home studio
 * UREI 1176 compressors (drums)