Which fuzz is it?

Which fuzz is it?
This is probably a bread and butter question for you guitarists, but as a bassist I'm pretty clueless about the names of presumably famous fuzzes. Does anyone know the fuzz used by Ernie Isley on The Isley Brothers' 'Summer Breeze'? and likewise by Thomas McClary on the solo part to The Commodores' 'Easy'? No prizes or anything, its just I have always liked them and thought it would be interesting to know...

Re: Which fuzz is it?
Does anyone know the fuzz used by Ernie Isley on The Isley Brothers' 'Summer Breeze'? and likewise by Thomas McClary on the solo part to The Commodores' 'Easy'? There's a good article at :- http://mixonline.com/recording/interviews/audio_isley_brothers_lady/ Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff were engineering the Isleys sessions and for the track That Lady, Malcolm says :- The lead guitar part alone took several tracks: “We had the Octavia box, a direct from the guitar, a Berwin noise suppressor, limiters, all sorts of things going,” Cecil says. “The Octavia made a tremendous amount of noise, so we had to use whatever means were available to minimize it. One small turn of a knob and all the parameters would change. It was trial-and-error. Ernie would play a line and we'd try different sounds on it. He'd come back in the control room and we'd listen to it, decide if it was right. Then, when it came time to mix, because we had four or five tracks for the guitar, we'd find the blend that worked best. Ernie was always very cooperative, and he could really play.” As Summer Breeze was on the same album then I'm assuming a similar approach would have been used for all the guitar parts.

Thanks for the info. I really enjoyed the article, apparantley Roger Mayer made some Hendrix style adaptations for a young Ernie... “Anyway, he took Ernie's guitar and completely re-modified it exactly the way Hendrix had his, and he also built him an Octavia box, which is part of what allowed Hendrix to get that screaming sound. And Roger taught Ernie how to use it. So, we essentially Jimi Hendrix-ized Ernie when he was 18. He was so blown away and enamored with it; he took to it like a duck to water. He'd be in there just playing and playing; he wouldn't give it up." Interesting stuff about the producers Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff, I'd never heard of them before.

I hate the constant soloing on that song, it would be puuuurfect without the widdling!

Interesting stuff about the producers Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff, I'd never heard of them before. They also worked with Stevie Wonder on four of his key 1970s albums so the lush and complex synth parts were generated by TONTO (that's the electronics equivalent of guitar/amp/pedal porn for synth devotees !!). The days when electronics filled a large space rather than software emulators on a computer screen... There’s a clip of Stevie Wonder and TONTO with commentary by Malcolm and Robert at :- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuaSzFf7yq0&feature=related Good to see the musicians as boffins tweaking away in the background :D

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