Champion Leccy – The Skitzy, dual layered modulated reverb
The Skitzy a dual layered modulated reverb pedal with some DNA from both the Skitter and the Woozy (thus the name).
It 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.
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.
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.