Mad Professor Fire Red Fuzz [traced]

[culturejam]

Reposting the schematic after it was lost in a storm.

I had this on my hard drive, as did Dan Zink who posted it on page 3 of this thread.

frf.png (10.13 KiB) Viewed 4922 times

[coldcraft]

do it, do it, do it!

[analogguru]

Hey cool, Bjorn can even build a Big Muff Pi.....

waiting for the rest of the pictures.

analogguru

[rcubed]

Fuzzmaster FM-2 varient?

[culturejam]

Fuzzmaster FM-2 varient?

I'm thinking a Big Muff, but with JFETs set up as clippers for Q2 and 1n4148 clippers for Q3.

[dcountry13]

Thanks guys, I was just thinking about this today and wondering why $300.00 plus?

Gotta watch this thread.

[coldcraft]

i'm kinda interested to see if there's any added feedback to the circuit. if it was designed by BJ, that seems to be recurring theme in his versions.

[mictester]

Thanks guys, I was just thinking about this today and wondering why $300.00 plus?

No reason at all. "Design" costs?

Perhaps $200 if he laid out a new PCB and spent an hour or two tweaking components - perhaps one evening's work - and that's if he has a high opinion of his own self-worth.

Component cost? $20 per unit (and that's if he paid one-off prices for parts).

Construction costs? $30 - two hours of a labourer's time.

All he needs to do then is to post some bogus "reviews" of this "wonderful" "new" "unique" pedal on the usual pages, and he'll sell loads of them. The funny thing is, if he charged a sensible price for them, the fools who buy the Boutique rubbish wouldn't buy from him because as it's cheap, it can't be any good!

[darkglass]

Thanks guys, I was just thinking about this today and wondering why $300.00 plus?

No reason at all. "Design" costs?

Perhaps $200 if he laid out a new PCB and spent an hour or two tweaking components - perhaps one evening's work - and that's if he has a high opinion of his own self-worth.

Component cost? $20 per unit (and that's if he paid one-off prices for parts).

Construction costs? $30 - two hours of a labourer's time.

All he needs to do then is to post some bogus "reviews" of this "wonderful" "new" "unique" pedal on the usual pages, and he'll sell loads of them. The funny thing is, if he charged a sensible price for them, the fools who buy the Boutique rubbish wouldn't buy from him because as it's cheap, it can't be any good!

There´s something you tend to forget my dear american fellows. Here in Europe, unlike USA every manufacturing process is subject to a nice 22% VAT.
But mostly, the huge difference is that social security and health care must be paid by the employers. At least that´s the way it´s in Finland as far as I know. Besides the costs of everything are much higher than almost everywhere,let´s add 22% extra to pedals made in Malibu, paying every employee a minimum salary of 8€ and hour (that´s a very unerrated salary, my girlfriend works as a waitress after college and gets 10€), with the employer paying for health care, and I bet you wouldn´t be able to sell it for much less.
I find it ironic that some complain about big manufacturers hiring inmigrants, underpaying them, but when someone pays decent salaries (as demanded by finnish law)complain about the price. The money has to come from somewhere.
Now, if they were outsourced to china (like EBS does) or made in USA, the prices would go way down... but here in Finland I´m affraid it´s quite hard to produce cheaper :S.

Best Regards

Doug.

[sinner]

Mictester is European

[darkglass]

Mictester is European

I'm affraid that wouldn't reduce VAT, or minimum payment here...

[culturejam]

Do these look like the parts to a muff?

Pretty much, yes. Not a Triangle, though, as the input resister is way too high.

Thanks guys, I was just thinking about this today and wondering why $300.00 plus?

No reason at all. "Design" costs?

The reason is "Because people keep paying the asking price."

I honestly think that approaching the cost of a pedal from the perspective of how much it actually costs to produce isn't a realistic way to value it. At least not from a market/consumer standpoint. If people pay $600 for a pedal, then that's what it is worth, regardless of its cost. Worth and cost are very different things.

[darkglass]

Before someone butches me virtually , I'd like to add that I am not defending anyone, I'm just explaining why I know the retail prices of something handmade in Finland are higher than if the same thing would be made in USA. It´s just because is more (much more) expensive to build.
I am willing to pay more for something handmade knowing that the person who build it get's well paid, and has decent health care. But then, that's just me... I've been guilty of buying couple of behringers for example .

[darkglass]

Do these look like the parts to a muff?

Pretty much, yes. Not a Triangle, though, as the input resister is way too high.

Thanks guys, I was just thinking about this today and wondering why $300.00 plus?

No reason at all. "Design" costs?

The reason is "Because people keep paying the asking price."

I honestly think that approaching the cost of a pedal from the perspective of how much it actually costs to produce isn't a realistic way to value it. At least not from a market/consumer standpoint. If people pay $600 for a pedal, then that's what it is worth, regardless of its cost. Worth and cost are very different things.

Yepp, a product can be very cheap to manufacture, and yet have really high value.

[culturejam]

Is it as Muff-ish as I suspect?

[mictester]

Mictester is European

I'm affraid that wouldn't reduce VAT, or minimum payment here...

We currently suffer 17.5% VAT.

If you add up the expense of manufacturing these, including £15 (€18) per hour for a soldering-iron wielding grunt, then add the VAT, it still can't exceed €60 (£50). At the usual 300% mark up, it should only cost €180 (£150).

[dcountry13]

I understand the $300.00 price tag, but to be honest I would understand a $159.00 price tag or $499.00 price tage, too.

My main question was "Why?". Those reasons vary from pedal to pedal. Rare NOS components, difficulty in development, lack of competition offering same-type effect, handwiring, handpainting, pretentiousness, cost of building/shipping/taxes, etc.

Just wondering aloud about Mad Professor and their products.

Having considered VAT, I guess the cost seems reasonable for a pedal of this type.

And as someone stated it's as valuable as someone will pay for it. But if I manufacture 100 of one pedal and can sell 8 of them at $400 each or 85 of them at $150 each. What are they worth? $400? Or $150. Or somewhere inbetween? Old debate, I know. Just some food for thought, even if just for me.

Now lets take a further look at this pedal.......................

[rcubed]

Is there a "standard" general big muff schematic that everyone uses? If so when I draw up the final schematic I'll follow a similar part numbering, etc as that if I can.

I use the one from General Guitar Gadgets.

[culturejam]

Is there a "standard" general big muff schematic that everyone uses? If so when I draw up the final schematic I'll follow a similar part numbering, etc as that if I can.

I'm not sure there is a standard, but I do know that basically nobody marks the input pulldown as R1. So that first input resistor should be R1. I guess just go from there?

People who are going to look at the schematic will be able to to compare it to others and figure out which part is which.

[Greg]

Very Muff'ish indeed.