Question about Comparator phase output.

[earthtonesaudio]

The Anderton "Ultra Fuzz" from Electronics Projects for Musicians uses an inverting gain stage followed by the comparator which does the conversion from sine to square wave, and produces the fuzz effect.  The audio goes into the noninverting input, and the inverting input is connected to the reference voltage.  In the schems for comparators, this is always how I've seen it done.  Signal into (+) input, voltage reference into (-) input on the opamp. 

But what happens to the signal when it comes out of the comparator?  If you put the signal into the non-inverting input, the output would be in-phase, right? 

It just struck me as strange that Craig Anderton would have an effect that has an inverted-phase output when he makes a point of saying that his effects do not invert the phase of the signal.  It made me second-guess what happens in comparator action.

...Which brings me to my question.  If you put an audio signal on the (+) input of an op-amp used as a comparator, is the phase at the output inverted or not?

Thanks,
Alex

[slacker]

The signal out of the comparator will be in phase with the input. Basically when the input goes above the reference voltage the output goes high and when it goes below the reference voltage the output goes low.

[johngreene]

The Anderton "Ultra Fuzz" is inverting.

[earthtonesaudio]

Cool, thanks.  That's pretty much what I thought.  So last night I breadboarded it with the non-inverting comparator, then again with an inverting comparator, and I think the inverting comparator sounded slightly different.  Still has the characteristic gating action, and the sensitivity control works the same (probably backwards but I have no way of telling the difference), but I imagined the sound was slightly more raspy, not so "synth-like."  Maybe just my imagination.

Anyway, I'm going to play with adding some hysteresis to the comparator and see if I can get good sounds.  I tried 100pF from output to (+) input using the non-inverting comparator, and it made for some really fun and animated harmonics, sort of similar to the Z. Vex Machine, but not as controlled sounding.

I might just have a unique circuit when I'm done modding.