This article will give a pretty in depth run through of the Skitzy controls as well as some information on the functions and sounds it covers.

Here’s a quick video which runs through a bunch of different settings. It’ll give you a good idea of what the Skitzy can do. If you come back to watch again after reading this article you’ll have a much better idea of what’s going on and how things combine and interact.

Controls

Dry

The dry signal has a level control. You can dial it out to go full wet, or you can go the other way and give it a huge push if you want to use the Skitzy as a boost with reverb. Parity is around noon.

I like to have a nice small touch of sculpted gain adding some harmonic content to the dry signal. Nothing crazy, just enough to sweeten the tone and have it fit in well with the wet signal. A few years ago in some of the very early Skitters I went just that hair too far and in some more extreme cases with specific set ups it would clip. I dialled that back straight away and applied it to all designs since. When designing the Skitzy I took a bit more time to really dial it in. I applied a little bit of knowledge I gained from the Dunsh to reinvent the input stage.

It’s as nice and tasteful and well balanced as ever AND I’ve added an internal trim for gain, so if the user wants that wee bit more, it’s there. The default position of the trim is zeroed, adding no gain.

BE AWARE though! At higher settings it will push the reverb into some dirty clipping. This clipping might be what you want if you’re leaning into the nasty lofi side of the pedal, especially if you’re combining the Skitzy with a dirt pedal.

I’ve added a bit at the bottom of the article, but I really want to stress that all internal controls (and there are a few) are really only for fine tuning some small aspects of the pedal AFTER the user has spent a good amount of time getting to know the pedal in their set up, and then ONLY IF there is some small parameter that needs adjustment. The internal controls are internal for a reason. All the main stuff is on the outside.

The LFO (white knobs)

It has the same LFO as the Skitter and Woozy with 8 waveforms and a depth (space) and speed (time) control. This LFO affects modulation to both reverb signals.

The reverb

The reverb comes from a Belton brick. Belton bricks have an inherent predelay that cannot be adjusted, but they are also dialled in nicely so that the reverb stays out of the way of your dry signal.

The Belton brick puts out two parallel signals each with their own unique voicing and modulation controls. I really crammed as much as I could into the two reverbs to give as much tweakability as possible. In some settings the two reverbs are out of phase to add some extra character to the modulation.

Due to that phase relationship some settings may be slightly louder or quieter than others, you can easily balance this out and find the blend of voicings you want with the volume controls.

Tremverb – volume modulated reverb (grey knob)

The tremverb covers the natural Belton brick reverb sound, tremolo reverb and even ring mod reverb territory. It has a volume knob so you can control its level in the mix. It also has two switches (trem and sway) for voicing and modulation options detailed below.

Trem – a three way switch for no tremolo, tremolo or phase cancellation tremolo.

The phase cancellation tremolo cancels out the signal twice per cycle of the LFO, so it’s twice as fast. At higher speeds that gives you the ring mod sounds.

Sway – a two way switch to select the source of the reverb.

When the switch is down it is coming directly from the Belton brick.

When the switch is up it is being tapped from the swayverb instead. In this mode the tremverb is applying tremolo or ring mod to a parallel swayverb. The original swayverb signal is NOT affected by this tremolo.

Swayverb – pitch modulated/ tape reverb (red knobs)

The swayverb is voiced slightly differently to the tremverb and covers pitch modulated reverb, echo reverb, resonant reverb and tape smear reverb. It has a volume control for blending it with the tremverb to get the balance you want as well as a voicing switch (cheer) and controls over the echo feedback (backwash) and time (hangover).

The tremverb does not offer any controls over delay time or feedback. The swayverb does, this means you can move the swayverb around the tremverb to add more space between the two or more length for shifting textures and added richness.

Cheer – a three way switch so you can choose a voicing from echo, pitch modulation and pitch modualtion with tape smear.

Backwash – feedback/ repeats on the echo. At full rotation this will give the reverb a resonant metallic quality.

(This control also interacts with the second footswitch by setting the range of oscillation)

Hangover – lag/ echo time/ tape range. Depending on mode this either adds lag to the modulation, lengthens echo time or increases the range of the tape smear.

Second footswitch

The second footswitch adds another more direct feedback loop to the swayverb. How quickly and aggressively it oscillates depends on where you have the backwash control.

In tape smear reverb mode (cheer switch up) when you have some hangover dialled in, you can kill the oscillations by muting the strings of your guitar.

If oscillation isn’t your thing, the second footswitch can be changed to a tap tempo instead. There are DIP switches for this inside. It cannot do both at the same time.

Internal controls

There are some other internal controls too IF people need them. The ‘if’ is in bold and underlined, because they are for small tweaks and fine tuning only. Most people will not need them, but like I was saying earlier I really wanted to add a couple of small things so people could tailor the pedal to their set up and style once they’ve really delved into the feature set. I want to be very clear about this next bit so all of it is going in bold.

DO NOT MESS WITH THE INTERNAL CONTROLS WILLY NILLY!!!!!

SOME OF THEM ARE FOR BIASING AND TWIDDLING WILL ONLY TAKE AWAY FUNCTION OR MAKE THE PEDAL UNUSABLE!!!

There will be clear instructions coming about those internal controls and I’m always here to answer questions. But in the meantime here’s a list:

gain – affects dry and reverb signals. This gain control is on the input stage.

swayverb filter – you can make it a touch darker or brighter.

swayverb feedback – this is to tailor the range and aggressiveness of the second footswitch oscillations. It interacts with the backwash control.

swayverb depth – the space knob on the front controls both the depth of the tremverb and the swayverb. It is set fairly conservatively, and balances with the amount of modulation you get from the tremverb. If you want to get into seasick territory you can do that instead.

the DO NOT TOUCH! trimpots – the offset and the two unmarked ones are for biasing the modulation so that everything works. They are optimised. Any tweaking of these will mean the pedal will not function as well as it did, and not in a cool ‘easter egg’ kind of way, you just lose functionality. These trims can’t add anything, please leave them be, they had one job to do and they’ve done it, it’s now time for them to enjoy their retirement.

After release I am planning to add several walk through instruction videos about the Skitzy to Youtube including more detail on the internal controls.

How does the Skitzy compare to the Swan Hunter, Skitter and Woozy?

As I’m sure you can hear from the video above, it’s definitely a very Champion Leccy pedal. It has some elements of all three of those pedals, but the overlap is pretty minimal with any one pedal.

The Skitzy is a very compact and comprehensive design which also covers a lot of unique ground.

I know that some people will be wondering if this is a useful addition if they already have a Swan Hunter or whether this might replace their Swan Hunter. It’s almost impossible to answer that question, because it depends on so many other things.

It is very possible that you could find a use for both, especially if you’re looking for something similar with some different functionality. I think a lot of cases it’ll be one or the other.

I don’t like the idea of FOMO and I don’t want people to feel pressured to buy the new thing. I like customers to feel as informed as possible, so they can make a decision for themselves. So, I’ve drawn up table to help people compare models!

In the table below, you can see where certain designs have overlap, but please note that just because two pedals have an ‘x’ for the same function, it doesn’t mean that the voicing, range or controls for that function are the same.

For example the resonant reverb on the Skitzy adds resonance after the reverb, in the Swan Hunter the resonance can be added before the reverb when the series/ parallel blend (confluence) puts the reverb after the echo. They sound broadly similar, but the Skitzy version is stronger, brighter and less lofi.

A bold X means that that function is unique to that pedal.

function	Skitzy	Woozy V2	Skitter V2	Swan Hunter
wet signal paths	2	1	1	2
LFO	X	X	X
Belton brick reverb	X		X	X
echo		X		X
chorus		X
ducking/ gating				X
tremolo (dry signal)			X
tremolo (reverb)	X		X
tape sounds	X	X		X
oscillation	X			X
resonant echo		X		X
resonant reverb	X			X
ring mod reverb	X
echo reverb	X
fx loop				X
tap tempo	X*	X	X

* if selected internally. In the Skitzy, the second footswitch is oscillation by default.

As always, if you have any questions please let me know!

The next (and most likely final) article about the Skitzy will be some suggested settings as a starting point. I’m expecting to publish it within the next week or so.

Thank you for reading and thank you for your support!