Fuzz in a suitcase!

[Mr.Huge]

Personally i still can't believe how much Dunlop are selling them for now. £95 for two trannies, a handful of caps, two pots and a switch? It sickens me. If customers knew what they were in for...still they have to make money somehow.

You forgot a few things, like:

• all the trannies you have to buy to find a pair that have the right specs
• the labour for selecting trannies (not at Chinese rates AFAIK)
• the labour for assembly (again, likely not at Chinese rates)
• a custom cast chassis that is not simply an order of 10,000 from a product line where the company already makes 300,000 a year
• packaging and shipping for a product of that size and weight

Yes, hype factors in there, as does needless advertising at the sort of rates that capucino-drinking ad people demand, but there is a whole lot of other stuff that people never think of.  Sure, there are a lot more "parts" to a Fab Metal Distortion, and it sells for $15 USD and sounds pretty good from all reports, but it wouldn't be $15 if they packed it in a cast metal chassis (as opposed to a quickie injection molded plastic one) used real pots (instead of essentially long-shaft trimpots), and took their time to select germanium devices and solder them in place.  Some things cost more because they cost more.  Once in a while you get something like the Vexter version of the Fuzz Factory, where a manufacturer says "What the hell.  I can knock off some of the fancy non-essential details, and deliver the same electronic product at a lower price point".  Or you get decisions to forfeit a feature or two and things like the Mini Q-Tron show up.  But stuff costs what it costs, and manufacturers wouldn't buy the inventory needed to assure continuity in production if they couldn't assure enough of a profit margin to make it worth their while to buy up all those Ge trannies and ask for another run of a chassis that no other manufacturer will buy or use because of trademark (so you can't sell it the way you can dump 1,538 1590Bs you bought and can't use anymore).

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Thanks Mark,
I still don't know why the whole issue of parts quantity verses manufacturing pricing still comes up. You're post are always a breath of fresh air.
I haven't plug them all in together... that's a crazy idea! One I just might have to do...
The blue one with the rubber band isn't the best sounding... the two grey ones are amazing... also, the red one on the bottom with the silver knobs... that's my home jobber!
-Mr. Huge

[petemoore]

I haven't plug them all in together... that's a crazy idea! One I just might have to do...
The blue one with the rubber band isn't the best sounding... the two grey ones are amazing... also, the red one on the bottom with the silver knobs... that's my home jobber!
-Mr. Huge
  >>So the round case DOES influence the tone directly, as does the paint color...good to know...lol.
  >>I tried some seriesed FF stuff. More than enough gain for serious madness in 2, 3 was wellway-over the top.

[rockgardenlove]

So, where did you get them?