I put an order in for the first Skitzy prototype PCB in Jan 2021. Three years, many redesigns and additions later it’s ready for release!
It’s been one heck of a challenge, but I’m very happy with how it turned out.
So! Here’s an introduction and some info about the release! I’ve put the key TLDR info in green with some more detail afterwards for those who are interested.
This article got so long that I decided to cut it in half. The next installation (coming Monday 19th) will have details about the controls, what they do and how they interact.
What is the Skitzy?
It’s a dual layered modulated reverb pedal with some DNA from both the Skitter and the Woozy (thus the name).
The Skitzy has two parallel reverb signals – tremverb and swayverb – each with unique voicing and modulation options that can be blended together to create a broad range of different sounds, textures and feels including tremolo reverb, pitch modulated reverb, ring mod reverb, lofi tape smear reverb, echo reverb, resonant reverb and oscillating mess reverb.
How much will it be?
It will initially retail for $280.
What colourways will be available?
The first lot will be available in black, seafoam or light beige.
When and where will it be available?
The launch date is Friday the 23rd of February at noon (Philly time).
You can buy direct from us or one of our retailers. With time differences and the like, retailers may make their stock available earlier than us. I recommend hitting them up first. they will have stock on hand.
I’m planning to do this launch a little bit differently. I understand the frustration of waiting at noon refreshing the page hoping to get a pedal and then the website crashes and they sell out before you get to the checkout. So, I have a plan.
For direct orders, I will have back orders enabled on the listing for a limited time. I will leave this function on for about a week. If it gets to the point where wait times are months rather than weeks, I will stop taking back orders earlier. I will start a second batch as soon as I can.
Orders will start shipping on Monday the 26th of February. They will go out in the order they are received.
The wait time for back orders will likely be up to a few weeks, depending on the backlog and where they are in the queue. Please be patient, I’ll be building and shipping as quickly as I can.
THERE WILL BE A SMALL RESTOCKING FEE FOR CANCELLED ORDERS.
Development and design process
I threw everything at this one and even managed to push my design chops a wee bit further. I think it’s my most refined pedal yet. It’s also the densest pedal I’ve ever designed.
I really wanted to condense the Skitzy down so it would fit in a Woozy sized enclosure rather than a big auld Swanny box. It’s the first double sided PCB I’ve designed. I also found a way to neatly add a middle row of switches to the layout, so I could keep it nice and compact. I’m excited to see how I can apply everything I learned to future designs.
The Skitzy started with the idea of adding chorus to reverb, which in my head would create a beautiful clear and lush sound, but of course due to the diffuse nature of reverb, it didn’t end up anything like that. It didn’t sound simply like ‘chorus but on reverb’, it sounded like reverb with modulated reverb on top.
I don’t know why but I was a little deflated after that. I guess I was just so set on the magical, impossible sound I had in my head. I walked away from the design for a while but a few months later whilst trying to get a different design over the finish line I ended up coming up with an approach that breathed new life into the whole concept and it took off from there.
The added richness, thickness and character of two parallel modulated reverbs became the new starting point and I began working towards a reverb that would cover as much of that ground as possible by summing two parallel and uniquely voiced reverbs.
I also decided to develop the Skitzy alongside the Dunsh as a highly flexible and customisable super duper Champion Leccy shoegaze combo. So, the Skitzy works great with the Dunsh! But it’ll also work great with just about any dirt pedal (apart from that really bad one we all know about and hate and say mean things about behind its back).
I had originally planned to release both the Skitzy and the Dunsh at the same time, I just kept getting new and more interesting ideas for the Skitzy so it took a bit longer, but it’s done now and I’m pretty proud of it! I think it has that definite Champion Leccy character and expansive feature set that I always aim for.
Layout
Here’s the layout! You can read more about the controls and how they interact in this article.
Shortly after release I plan to add several walk through instruction videos about the Skitzy to Youtube including more detail on the internal controls and maybe some suggested settings or what have you! Who knows!
If you have any questions, you can always hit us up on the contact page or join the discord!
As always, thank you very much for your support, and thank you for reading!