champion Leccy The Skitzy - Seafoam

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.

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.