Demanding squarewave customer, please help!

[Krinor]

Hi guys,

I have a customer who wants to order a squarewave fuzz. He is after something that really "goes into rectangles" and litterally can destroy amps if possible! What on this lovely earth should I offer him ?! I found this thing called Univox which Mark Hammer presented, but I'm affraid it just won't cut it for this guy... Anyone ?

[GREEN FUZ]

Uglyface?

[soggybag]

I'll second the Ugly Face!

[Krinor]

Wow, I've actually never checked that one out. Really ugly little thing. 
Just out of curiosity: is it possible to go even further ? And have an enormous gain boost after that?! This guy really want's a total meltdown!

[R.G.]

Hmmm... goes to rectangles...

OK. Get some LM339 comparators. Put together a gain stage, maybe 10X ahead of it and feed the 10X signal into the comparator. What comes out of the comparator is pure rectangles. There is NO in between. Use a few mV of hysteresis on the comparator to ensure no middle ground.

Then there's destroying the amp. Get a wall wart with a 30-40V output. Put a MOSFET capable of withstanding the full power supply on it, then feed the square wave out of the comparator to the MOSFET. The MOSFET's drain will bang between ground and the power supply very, very rapidly. This will destroy an unprotected solid state amp input, and will temporarily disable a tube input from all the grid conduction.

If you haven't figured it out yet, your customer doesn't know what he's asking for. 

[Boogdish]

If you haven't figured it out yet, your customer doesn't know what he's asking for. 

or is possibly playing an elaborate/cruel April Fool's Day joke on somone.

"Hey bob, I got you a distortion pedal as a late birthday gift"
"oh great I'll just try it out on my amp and..."
BOOM
"APRIL FOOOOOOLLLSSSS!!!"

[soggybag]

The stock Ugly Face is pretty loud. The output comes directly from the 7555, so it swings pretty much from 0 to 9V. I never have the volume up above about 25%. I have a few of these, I have started putting a 68K resister in series with a A10K volume pot. The out put is still pretty loud but I find I use the whole range.

[Krinor]

Hmmm... goes to rectangles...

OK. Get some LM339 comparators. Put together a gain stage, maybe 10X ahead of it and feed the 10X signal into the comparator. What comes out of the comparator is pure rectangles. There is NO in between. Use a few mV of hysteresis on the comparator to ensure no middle ground.

Then there's destroying the amp. Get a wall wart with a 30-40V output. Put a MOSFET capable of withstanding the full power supply on it, then feed the square wave out of the comparator to the MOSFET. The MOSFET's drain will bang between ground and the power supply very, very rapidly. This will destroy an unprotected solid state amp input, and will temporarily disable a tube input from all the grid conduction.

If you haven't figured it out yet, your customer doesn't know what he's asking for. 

Thanks R.G.
Some cool ideas in there.
Thinking through the conversation I had with this sound masochist I think what he actually meant was to be able to use a squarewave to blow the element, and maybe not actually killing the amp, but driving it way past insanity, and then some. He wants to play through that havoc and record it, so obviously if the light goes out then there won't be much "fun".
Oh, why can't people just be happy with a stock Fuzz Face anymore! 

For now I guess I'll try the Uglyface and see if that's sufficient. Can I use the dual VTL5C3 unit in that circuit ?

[Cardboard Tube Samurai]

Schemo for this Ugly Face?

[GREEN FUZ]

You`ll need to scroll down about 3/4 of the page.

http://www.geocities.com/tpe123/folkurban/fuzz/snippets.html

[Krinor]

And some additional info here:
http://www.home-wrecker.com/uglyface.html

Okay, now the guy says he wants a Maestro Brassmaster but wants to be able to tune the frequency respons smoothly (e.g. not with a capacitor selector pot)... oh my.  He wants to be able to set the height and length of the "squares". I guess I'm on rather thin ice here... 

[R.G.]

Krinor, there is a concept in marketing that's not generally known in the public, but it's applicable and unarguably true.

There exist customers that you don't want. 

[Krinor]

Haha. That was probably the best advise. Thanks, I'll keep that in mind. 

[soggybag]

I have used VTL5C3 with the Ugly Face it works well. The envelope is very simple it works with almost any LDR/LED combo.

Sometimes you need to tell a customer what they want. Often times they only think the know what they want.

[R.G.]

That's true too.

However, there are a zillion ways for a customer to get someone else's amp blown up and then blame it on YOU if what they wanted goes wrong.

Sometimes you need to tell a customer, politely, that you don't have time for that and that it would cost 'way too much, so he needs to go out that door over there and down the street to your worst-enemy competition.

Failing that, the price you quote has to include enough to make you feel good even if he trashes someone else's amp and YOUR good name as a result.

In a market economy, there is always a number which will make you feel OK about what happens. Be sure to figure out what that number is before quoting a price.

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

There exist customers that you don't want. 

Never a truer word spoken! I know EXACTLY what you mean - the only thing worse than not making a sale, is making a sale to the WRONG guy

[DiamondDog]

There exist customers that you don't want. 

And they always want everything for nothing, cannot be pleased, will suck 40 hours of your time for free, really have no idea what it is that they want but it must have the magic bits in it, in the end they cost you five times the profit on what you were doing, and in the end they will tell everyone how bad you are.

Then you say enough is enough, and divorce them.  (yes, this line is a joke...)

[Krinor]

I get the picture. I'll be more carefull hereafter... I'll build the Uglyface, and if it is not sick enough I'll try that politness trick

[Mark Hammer]

1) The Univox "Squarewave" is nothing of the sort.  Keep in mind that what you CALL a pedal can be different from what it does.

2) I'm sure there do exist customers whose demeanor is generally unpleasant regardless of circumstances.  There also exist customers whose demeanor is unpleasant because they feel you aren't making an effort to meet their expectations.  Meanwhile, their expectations are based on MINIMAL KNOWLEDGE and BAD ADVICE and may be wholly unrealistic, so you'll never meet them.  This is why I make such an effort to always explain things and make sure people understand them.  If they don't end up building things for themselves, then at the very least they end up with a better, and more realistic, appreciation of how things work, and what they can and can't do, which will make them better customers.  Keep in mind that your worst customers may be those who got truly bad advice and explanation from another store or forum.  Honestly, I don't know why more stores and repair benches don't provide either web-documents or simply posters on the wall on the premises that explain things.

Some 25 years ago, when I was doing my M.Sc., our department (Psychology) offered a course in instrumentation and interfacing.  Our prof guided us through assembly language, interfacing, busses, and the particulars of real-time data collection.  All through it, he emphasized that he wasn't expecting us to be able build the stuff (though some of us could at the end).  Rather, he wanted us to be well-informed enough, that when we went to the folks in the tech shop to get THEM to build something for us, we could anticipate what it needed to be, what the constraints were, and most importantly, how to describe our practical needs in terms that the techs could understand and map onto a technological/electronic solution.  The objective was that when you asked them to make you something, the first thing they delivered was EXACTLY what you needed, and worked like a charm.  For as long as I've been affiliated with this forum in its many incarnations, one of my principal objectives has been to raise the general level of technical comprehension (including systems) so that people COULD be better customers.  Happily, without stating so explicitly, a number of the old-timers here have followed a similar path, whether through postings here, columns in magazines, or on-line documents.  On behalf of weary sales and repair staff everywhere, I guess we should thank you.  Well-informed customers (distinct from dangerously misinformed or minimally informed) generally make better customers.