Canterbury Scene and fuzz pedals

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

reading this topic, I wanted to make my contribution.

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"