Canterbury Scene and fuzz pedals

Phil Miller sounds like he's using the "Big Muff" but you never know. Distortion or a fuzz tone which was built into guitar amps back then was rather impressive sounding. I believe guitarist Jeff Beck was using Orange Amps at the time. A good example is on Rough And Ready where his guitar is singing...rather crying..A good example of that particular guitar sound would be present on Camel recordings.

Camel sometimes had similarities to what one would hear from Canterbury bands. "Supertwister" from Mirage, Several tracks from Moonmadness and Rain Dances and of course CAMEL A LIVE RECORD. With Richard Sinclair on vocals and Mel Collins on sax it has definite similarities to what exists in the Canterbury style. Andrew Latimer's guitar sound is more like Jeff Beck and far from sounding like Phil Miller.

Phil Miller ...in some cases captured the fuzz tone that Bob Fripp used on Larks Tongues In Aspic Part 1. The same fuzz tone is heard on Matching Mole recordings. On National Health albums the fuzz is less and the sustain is more.

In some cases Phil Lee from Gilgamesh captured that fuzzy tone during improvisation on electric guitar. He was a brilliant Classical guitarist as well.

Steve Hillage didn't have a fuzzy tone. He produced a full sounding tone where the treble of his high pitched notes and the bass of his lower sounding notes were pronounced with clarity. Even though he used Distortion it sounded off quite differently and sophisticated not unlike Frank Marino or Ronnie Montrose playing Jazz Rock.Gong were thought to be Canterbury and Hillage contributed immensely on their important albums.

Mike Oldfield was briefly affiliated with Canterbury musicians and he sounded like he was using a Big Muff on Tubular Bells. The distorted sound that Hillage used in Gong was eventually reproduced with an MXR pedal. For a while though it seemed as if you could only produce that sound through a Marshall Amp that had built in Distortion...or an Orange Amp. I might be wrong..but I believe the only way to get that sound was by turning up the amps along with using the Distortion dial.

In some cases guitarists with Steely Dan often produced that driving energetic affect on "Reelin' In The Years" or "Bodhisattva ". I remember in 68' there wasn't a pedal for it. ..but there was "The Big Muff"

reading this topic, I wanted to make my contribution.

I was looking at the two Wattson clones earlier. Apparently, they're the most accurate. (They've even been sued by Univox - good sign).

And Polymorphia may be happy to know that clones are indeed available. ;-)

https://www.thegearpage.net/board/index.php?threads/what-are-my-options-for-a-univox-super-fuzz.1796015/

That's interesting ! Could be. 

I was looking up the price of Fuzz Faces yesterday - ha haaaa, thousands for a pedal because it has the original germanium transistors in it. World's gone mad, a bipolar transistor junction transistor is basically a voltage controlled high speed switch. It's like saying a vintage car handles differently due to the wind resistance of the original paint. 

Just found this, a schematic for a Univox Superfuzz. The original transistors are 2SC828's - you can get new old stock ones for 99p each. There are six of them, standard NPN ones. You could actually use BC547's and save a few quid, there wouldn't be much of a difference. Pretty simple to build this on stripboard or design a simple PCB for it. Not that I'm volunteering, too much work to do on the modular synth !!! 

Well, perhaps the thread is actually about "do you know what equipment was used" rather than "let's all go off on a tangent and no we don't", Mosh........ ;-)

This may help. Searchable pedals and effects made from 1960 - 69. Just alter the link to get it to, say, 1972. 

https://reverb.com/marketplace/effects-and-pedals?year_max=1969&year_min=1960

They're the most likely. However, remember that this is an era where decent pedals and amps are scarce in the UK. You can get bassists using guitar pedals, there are obscure manufacturers coming up with a few designs which are only manufactured by the handful - you also get bassists using guitar amps, so unless you get an equipment list or a photo, you can never be completely sure. 

My money would really be on a Fuzz Face or Big Muff Pi. That covers most of the possibilities. However, of course, without knowing what the amp was, you're never going to absolutely replicate the sound. And even if you found an old bass valve amp, which it just might be, modern valves will sound different. And a modern one is probably biased correctly as well. Then there's the bass and string choice. ;-)

You may get close, but you probably won't get *exact*. Although that may not matter. 

I thought I'd include a picture of a tangent at this point. ;-) (Sorry. Mosh. ;-) )