We were always trying things in the studio. Like as you mentioned in Black Butter....That was actually reverse echo. Turned the tape upside down so when Lee sang the echo would come first then his voice.
One thing of note was that our engineer, Paul Buff had actually rigged the 8 track to become a 10 track....it was the only one around...pretty cool.
We only brought in outside musicians on our third album strings and brass but we were all in the studio playing simultaneously with them.
George Tipton wrote the orchestrations and conducted. It was kinda cool and fun for us but we detested most of the songs they were used on. We did like the Carol King songs but we preferred writing our own stuff. But even those were being tampered with by bringing in outside lyricists They thought our own lyrics were too nonsensical and psychedelic.