Can you guess how this guitar's tone was made?

[alex matson]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRErccWni-o
Guitarist: Phil Miller
Band: National Health
Album: Of Queues and Cures
The tone I'm wondering about is all over this wonderful album, but for my purposes here, check out 12:12 (an all too brief multitracked sustaining tour de force.)
A mellower tune with the same tone is Squarer for Maud, the guitar tone starts at 16:25. I assume there's compression as well as amp type and settings involved. Given that we are in 1978 for this album, does anyone have any suggestions for what else might have been involved?

[kslight]

The first part sounds like they were using varispeed maybe to get the high parts, has kind of that weird character to it.

Second part a lot of volume riding going on, either volume control on the guitar, volume pedal, or fader?

Is that what you were asking about? I'm not really hearing anything else special?

[alex matson]

I'm hearing the sustain, almost like an ebow although I know that's not it. It has a singing quality, I dunno...am I overthinking it?

[kslight]

Fuzz maybe would create that kind of sustain?

[alex matson]

Well, I learned some stuff about tone today...I always thought fuzz was for a 'Satisfaction' type sound. Broke into the pedalboards in Logic and it turns out most lead guitar patches have tons of sustain aided by fuzz
Did I mention I'm a keys player? Whether Logic is as good as the real thing in terms of stomp boxes, it's really fun and educational to try things out for free.

[kslight]

No worries. I would have said fuzz first but I wasn't sure what you were referring to. Amp plugins are great for testing out all that stuff?no experience with the Logic ones but there's no shame in trying that stuff out before buying pedals?in fact some of that stuff is better than pedals, honestly, because you can nerd out and automate your whole "pedal board" as you mix, in a way you'd never be able to with a real setup. I used to do this with Guitar Rig all the time. Who cares if it sounds like what its supposed to?as long as it sounds good.

I am a little young to give you a first hand account, but my pestering of engineers that worked in that era would suggest that shooting the electric guitar into the compressors at all (unless they needed to fix something) wasn't super common?most studios did not have dozens of outboard compressors/EQs/preamps?I think that's something that is relatively new TBH. For most it was a board (probably not Neve/SSL/API unless you were a big deal, more like Harrison or MCI), a couple 2" 24 track machines (one on standby when the other was out for service?again probably not Studer 2" 16 track 30ips? more like MCI 2" 24 track at 15ips), a 2 track deck, a couple compressors, maybe a couple gates, and a reverb/echo or two. That's it. So any compression on electric guitar would more often than not be coming from the amp itself or stomp boxes. Sure tape compression slightly, but most weren't going for slamming the thing either.

Someone else probably has the opposite experience, but this would be what I have discussed with engineers from that era anyway.

[Gregg Juke]

Good band! I'm pretty sure I have that on LP somewhere. If I remember my prog rock history, both Bill Bruford and John Wetton spent some time in National Health...

Re: guitar tone, I agree with kslight; pretty standard and not too much, if any, compresh. Fuzz-wise, you can dial something like an EHX Big Muff in to a tone that is pretty thick and sustain-y, with no heavy "fuzz"/"Satisfaction" sound.

GJ

[Magnetic Services]

Whoa! There really always is another prog band to discover... And I thought I had seen 'em all.

No idea what type of guitar (let's say a Les Paul), but I'd say a neck pickup into at least one (but possibly multiple) fuzz devices to absolutely squish the sound, then some kind of very focused EQ or a wah pedal in fixed position.

Brian May and Robert Fripp also got some tones similar to this, so perhaps check out their gear.

This tone is also all over certain Gong records.

[I'm Painting Again]

sounds kind of like an EH octave multiplexer

[alex matson]

Whoa! There really always is another prog band to discover...

http://www.progarchives.com/ seems to come up with info whenever I am looking for info...the late 60's - 70's Canterbury scene seems to have been a hotbed of musical...is incest too strong a word?