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They used 60's fuzzes. I think the shinei fuzz was the one Jim liked. A lot of companies like univox made clones of the shinei fuzz. I'm not sure if they still make them, but the schematics are online in alot of places. I don't know what other effects they used.
It sounds on some of their songs like they are blending a ring mod on a high octave type setting into a fuzz sound to get a really sick fuzz with a feedbackish quality to it.
I've been told that some of the sounds they have got have been made with contact mics and stuff. A friend told me that the feedback on Never Understand was a broken air conditioner, but he could have been shitting me, he likes to do that to people.
A lot of it was playing with amps I believe. Playing with multiple amps, damaging them, etc. They used hollow bodies as well as old surf guitars because they didn't like to have a lot of sustain. Hollowbodies and old surf guitars like tiescos have really shitty single coils. With humbuckers, you can practically face an amp and if you are playing rhythm, not much feedback will come out except when you stop playing. With hollow-bodies and crappy surf guitars I've found that you can create interesting melodies over the rhythm. I would assume they did similar sort of stuff.
Usually if I want to play JAMC tunes, I'll use my stereo effects so I can plug several effects in. I'll have a loud good sounding amp set to a normal setting and have 1 or 2 crappy little solid states cranked up. I have a crappy johnson closed back 15 watt with an 8 inch speaker, and it sounds like ass. I like to plug the effect out of an effect into that and the clean out into my Squier Champ (my practice amp). That way I can get a pulsating buzzsaw chorus in one amp and a classic blues dirty sound on the other amp with some reverb.
Using multiple amps you create different fuzz tones that blend in interesting ways.
Unfortunately, it is fun to do at home, but a bitch to set up live. I like the 2 amp sound for my music better, partially because of my experimenting when I was kicking out the jams to Never Understand and Taste of Cindy
and finding some really cool tones I could use later. I only use 1 amp live, but hopefully I'll change that soon, especially since I have a song where I use ring mod feedback over rhythm at the end, which requires me to change to a shitty guitar and use a 15W amp on a stand.
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