{"id":166,"date":"2025-02-13T00:21:46","date_gmt":"2025-02-13T00:21:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fakedeadhead.com\/?page_id=166"},"modified":"2025-07-16T20:03:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-16T20:03:12","slug":"chapter-9-crash-and-burn","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/fakedeadhead.com\/index.php\/table-of-contents\/chapter-9-crash-and-burn\/","title":{"rendered":"Chapter 8 – Crash and Burn"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Well I got back from Hawaii in November and I remember walking around the street fair with my Family when my phone started blowing up. It was Mr. X and he was GOING OFF on me. “Nothing worked, It’s all your fault, You F$@ked me!, You blew me off!” I refrained from using any profanity and tried to be professional but I was like seriously, dude, you poured super glue on the Circuit board. He just kept on going…. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. X used to work for a prestigious Microphone company and had left some giddy at my place for me to use, which I never did. He used gear as currency to get into concerts and go backstage, etc. I had hoped to use it, but he wasn’t ever gone promote my stuff or anything and at this point I could have cared less. I just wanted to go back making our products and writing songs and playing in bands like I always had. I said come and get your crap out of my house and just go away and leave me and my family alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He drove over in his Tie Died, muscle T and proceeded to continue yelling at me from outside the gate, My neighbors were all coming out as he was creating a scene. I was almost gonna let him have it but I have a family. Had he touched me, it would have been a completely different story. I gave him his expensive Mic and said buh-bye. He asked what could have he done different to not have ended this way. Really? 1 give me the pickups and bass 4 months before the show, 2 invite me to the show, 3. pump my pedal, 4. maybe mention the song(s) I used the bass on. But now you’re gonna need to build a Time Machine for that. Manipulator. If he wants something he’s your best pal, but when he doesn’t get his way, he throws a tantrum. I know tantrums as I have four children. He’s the kid with the toys in the sandbox. If he doesn’t get his way he takes his toys, goes home and then throws rocks over the fence and calls you names. And boy the names and insults he was throwing at me. I actually felt sorry for him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I knew the Super-Freq was pretty much sunk at this point, and I was bummed as I thought it was a cool idea. I could do a similar thing with our own regular State Variable Filter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, he wouldn’t stop and he just kept badgering me. And now here’s Mr. Z in the equation broadcasting over the internet, the details of the arrangement that he had nothing to do with. None of our stuff works and he was the only guy in the universe that could fix it. Mr. X said, “You were wrong go check your ego”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I thought for a second maybe they are right and the circuit wasn’t working, I best check my ego. Luckily, I remembered I kept that 10th unit for debugging. I decided I would put together and see. Low and behold it worked just perfect. I also still had 9 LED boards as they had yet to pay for them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I knew who Mr. Z was, and he had been publicly dogging our product for years within this community. He even started modding our products to “make the correct”. Unfortunately he broke a one of our customers products at one time and it came to us for repair, and it was never the same. We lost the customer. A self appointed expert of all things. Im not too sure whether he can play guitar either. It doesn’t matter how technically correct a circuit and the parts are if you can’t make it sound good. A great player makes a crappy gear sound pretty good. They say it’s all in the fingers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway he had this to say:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“ Can’t bitch about Behringer anymore! This is not what you were commisioned to do, you ripped them off and should be ashamed of yourself. They came to you with a specific project to deliver and this was the product you delivered to them that i had to unfuck for them.You had NO intentions to deliver what you were commissioned to do and then put your head in the sand when you got called out and even continue to hold on to parts you were already paid for, ghosting those who handed you the info needed to.make this. But I am soo glad you got it already for NAMM!. I had my prototype of this for a couple months now and just finished cleaning up the mess you left. Good Riddance Musitronics..<\/em>“<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you go back and look at the deal page, his narrative of the deal is completely made up. And he was never any part of a deal. I did EXACTLY what I said I would!!!!! On Time. Anyway they had started a damage campaign against me and Musitronics. Extorting me to just give the LED boards, because the filters didn’t work and were in the trash and that they deserved a refund. I basically said, well this last unit here works, so Im gonna go ahead and show at NAMM and sell enough units to cover my costs of the LED boards. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had found an email for Mr. Y stating the following:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Congrats on the baby, hope everything’s well. I’m not quite sure where to start.The day or the base was a disaster. The electrolyst went completely dead, couldn’t get any sound on the night of the scramble and directly wire one of the pickups. So it could be played.I know that You faithfully reproduced the circuit as written with the exception of using the LED as a resistor instead of the dual reverse log pot.There are sound issues with this change that have effercted the sound of the eq.Using the board you made to put in a pedal has been challenging for my application. The problem is Compounded by use of Surface mount components. Those components have not stood up to soldering and resoldering. The pigtails required to run to each pot have created an untameable rats nest in the cavity. I really require 2 separate daughter boards to contain the pots so they can go in as a unit. More akin to the LED board which is beautiful.We intetend to support your pedal. Jut cannot use the pedal board on the bass.<\/em>“<\/p>\n\n\n\n

OK … What. they didn’t realize is that the Opto-Couplers could have been easily replaced with a dual reverse pot, but they never consulted me. It’s a 2 minute fix if you know where to dig. I mention this in Chapter 3. I figured I would try to make good with Mr. Y on the LED boards and offer them to him at cost as promised, but he would need to do some damage control, and call the hounds home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His response:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I am not sure why they posted all this stuff I do not use boards and forums.I build guitars 7 days a week. The right thing to do on your part would be to take back the 8 boards and components I have left and pro rate that against the cost of the LED boards. Since you built and amazinging pedal that has no flaws, and all the issues were my installation incompetence. You will have 8 more pedals to sell. Let mwle know. I still have 8 boards that are usless to me and have a built in flaw. The final layout made no considerations for my mounting needs and the pot hookups off your board is mickey mouse. I wanted a layout with high quality non -surface mount components, designed to fit into my bass . I wanted the pot clusters on seperate boards, that could drop in. The boards you made will mot hold up to soldering and resoldeing .If there is a bad component it is damn near impossible to troublshoot. You made your pedal whith the schematic we shared with you and left me hanging with a non- functioning board for the benifit. The thing fried because it was not designed to be used the way, I (the cutomer) intended to. I was the end user and u forced me to use what would fit in your hammond box.<\/em>“<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My Response:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Those boards all work as designed and are perfectly fine. I ran through it with a couple of top engineers just to make sure. In order to finish adding all the Mu-Tron features (envelope control, pedal control, LFO input) to control the Photocoplers, we had to add another 50 parts and a lot of circuitry and couple switches. These boards were one-offs for your basses and I would be more than happy (as I was leading up to the “Reveal”) to continue you with installation assistance. I offered to surface mount the knobs on a pob, but you wanted to use certain “NOS” pots. As I understand it, Alembic said that their design would have to be on a rack mountable circuit board so that they could mass-produce and productize it as well. I do know the original bass had pots dangling off the board as well and it was nothing like the rack mount version knob placement. I was never allowed to see or measure the bass! You sent me vectorized scans. Im not going to hunt in the dark to layout a PCB. I stand behind the boards I sent and they are deigned to power the Quad preamp and the LED boards. I was very pleased with the end to end system and really wanted to see it work correctly.<\/em>“<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As far as the schematic you sent….. Yes that was reviewed, but we had pretty much used the other 3 we found on the internet years ago. None of them were correct as we found out from the 1st round of prototypes a year ago. We also used a lot of boiler plate mu-tron circuits get it done rapidly with regards to part availability. It was turned around quick and delivered to you back in July. But you waited until a coupled days before the “Reveal” and it was a trainweck which you all blamed on me. It was my understanding that bass left here and Mr. X tried to super-glue actuators onto the LED board and made a mess and stuck down some of the buttons. Then you told me you broke some wires messing with the blend pot and still had noise in the bass.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was never “commissioned”. I sold you “stuffed” boards at cost and I took a bit hit on time and money. But since I was going to productize this as a collaborative, I was willing to soak it up the investment.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I told you I could not productizer the LED boards and was not willing to eat the development costs., but I did anyway.<\/em>“<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And then it starts back up. They REALLY wanted those LED boards, eh? Mr. Y Sends me an email:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I have not heard from you. I would like to try to get this impasse resolved. What is it going to take to get the Led board from you.? I have not spoken to anyone about these issues we are having with anyone except Mr. X. There was a mistake in the original schematic that happend to be In the area that used the Leds instead of the reverse log pot. This is fixable. We full intend to support the super freq and not really sure what is going on. I paid u alot of money for board that I cannot use in their current form. You went completely dark when I needed your consultation. Please contact me so we can resolve these minor issues and get this project back on track.<\/em>“<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And my response:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“It is nice to finally here from you regarding these matters. I have only been able to enjoy the insults of Mr. X.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

After my last conversation with him when he told me “none of your shit worked\u201d, I assembled the remaining Super Freq unit I had and verified that the circuit is working on par with the rack unit which I purchased from eBay.  In addition to the corrections we made to the original schematic from Alembic, we found a couple of other errors based on that unit.  Anyway, we were able to add the Mu-Tron features of envelope control and and pedal control as planned without problem<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It sure would have been nice to have had the original unit to test and measure.  I was never provided that opportunity.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I feel that the last minute hurry to get the bass together before SF only led to errors.  I do not believe that is was wired 100% correct when it came to me or when it left.  I was told that it was taken apart with and tinkered with subsequently and      I was never given a chance to fully test, measure and correct any values within the circuit.  Then I was told that my proprietary board was shown to other people who apparently do not understand this circuit or electronics.  I was told that it was all SMD junk ash that the original was not that way.  I made it clear at the beginning, this is how we build things and Im am not making one-off, thru-hole boards with NOS parts.   BTW, our circuit supports either optoelectronics(Photo-resistors) or dual reverse audio 100k pots for sweep. <\/em>  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also, subsequent to my last conversation with Mr. X, my lawyer advised me not to do any further work without a contract in place with regards  non-disclosure ,  \u201cpromised\u201d collab\/promotion, and of-course delineation of responsible warranty and our support.  As far as the \u201cIm not really sure what\u2019s going on\u201d stuff, as I stated to Mr. X, I will not play good cop bad cop between 2 points of contact.  I will only deal with the person who has the power to make decisions and can stand behind them.  That is with whom the contract will be made.  I do have the LED parts and boards still but I do not have the time to assemble.  <\/em>“<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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AND HERE IS THE GRAND TOTAL FOR THE 10 LED BOARDS…..ALL THAT NEEDED ME FOR IN THE FIRST PLACE! $186 EACH!!!!!!!!!! BUT WERE UNWILLING TO PAY!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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But they wouldn’t stop the damage campaign and now I know they would never REALLY get behind the pedal. Especially when the threats keep coming!, Hey isn’t that extortion? At this point the LED boards were no longer for sale and I was just gonna gear up for NAMM and demo the 10th Super Freq that apparently did not work! Which it did and everyone loved it, and we sold out our first run only to cover the development costs. But now I’m hiring attorneys considering defamation and collusion charges against X, Y, Z and possibly others? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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AS THEY TRIED TO DESTROY MY COMPANY AND PRODUCTS WITH ALL THEIR BUDDIES. THEN THEY TRIED TO TURN MY OWN FRIENDS AGAINST ME.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well I got back from Hawaii in November and I remember walking around the street fair with my Family when my phone started blowing up. It was Mr. X and he was GOING OFF on me. “Nothing worked, It’s all your fault, You F$@ked me!, You blew me off!” I refrained from using any profanity […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":110,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-166","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fakedeadhead.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fakedeadhead.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fakedeadhead.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fakedeadhead.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fakedeadhead.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/fakedeadhead.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":318,"href":"https:\/\/fakedeadhead.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/166\/revisions\/318"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fakedeadhead.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fakedeadhead.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}