LUTZ

In the 20 years that I've been designing and building pedals, this one has been quietly distilling the longest.

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We all know the back-story of the fuzz. It's the simplest and oldest effects circuit. It's the most archetypal. The simplicity makes it addictive to players, builders, and beginner tinkerers. Beauty lies in effortlessness, in simplicity. The path of least resistance. The traditional fuzz platform is so enigmatic because it is so versatile yet basic. In its simplest guise, a fuzz is just about 10 components but designed effectively it gives you a clean boost, an overdrive and searing spluttery lead tones in one small package.

 

Genius.

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Fuzz circuits are weird. If you're from the world of pro audio, a fuzz schematic looks like a terrible accident. Look at the pained faces while they dissect it. But herein is the genius. The low impedance input drags down the shrill steam-age guitar pickup and robs it of high frequency. It lowers it's resonant peak. It is also very interactive with the guitar volume control allowing on-the-fly changes onstage. The wave shaping of the overdrive stage works with the limitations of the pickup, compressing, and giving it muscle. A beautiful accident.

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Over the years I've made all of the major fuzzes for myself, on breadboard and as pedals and have used them at many, many gigs. Made lots of notes. Tried lots of prototypes. I'm familiar with all of the standard fuzz types; the 2 transistor ones, the three transistor ones, the weird 1.5V ones, the IC ones, the diode clipping ones. Each has a character.

 

The problem for me has always been that almost without exception, each flavour does one thing very well. The craft ale of the effects world. I told myself if I were to design a fuzz, it'd have to satify these points:

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1- Cover a large gain range. Bright treble boost to dreamy synth sustain

2- Clean up very neatly with the guitar volume control

3- Get that great octave up lead tone

4- Bass compatible

5- Lots and lots of volume

6- Must be smooth and controlled if needed, but also have an out of control / noisenik / chaotic character for experimentation

All of these are finally ticked, and more. The Lutz is finally here.

 

About the Lutz

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At it's heart, the Lutz is a two transistor fuzz, with a footswitchable transistor input boost / buffer stage.

- It has two 12-way high-pass filter switches, one pre-fuzz, one post-fuzz. These give a 144-way filter matrix to totally hone in on your tone.

- It has two on/off/on 'curly cable' switches on the top edge which simulate the added dulling capacitance of a curly cable plugged between guitar and Lutz, or Lutz and amp. To the left these simulate a shorter cable, and to right a longer cable. Centre position is off.

- Voltage sag control to lower the voltage and current fed to the circuit. It simulates a dying battery, and practically rolls off the top end and provides compression and squash.

- Volume control with a very large range. Unity at most settings is around 25%.

- Bias control to set the voltage bias of the fuzz stage. Start with this around 50% and use it to dial in how broken-up / distressed your tone is.

- Cap Defeat. This footswitch takes the power capacitor out of circuit, allowing the circuit to self-oscillate at some settings. This allows you to dial in a drone note to play to, or perhaps to use in sonic experimentation.

- Buffer On. This switches the input buffer on and off. This acts as a boost stage before the fuzz, adding more gain and sustain.

- The Lutz has a quiet relay bypass.

- The Lutz runs on 9V from a centre negative 2.1mm DC jack. The standard pedal PSU connector.

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Like all Horrothia Effects pedals, the Lutz is carefully built one by one in dreamy seaside Falmouth, UK.