Horrothia Effects Lutz

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

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.

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.

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:

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

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.

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

Warranty & Returns

All New products are covered by the manufacturers new warranty. Please check their website for the length of warranty and warranty conditions. If an item you receive is faulty get in touch with us ASAP. Second Hand products come with a 4 week warranty from us. If there is an issue let us know ASAP! This covers normal use and does not cover accidental damage, misuse, wrong power plugged into it, modding, water damage or any other damage caused by mistreatment. Just treat it nice and all will be good!

Shipping

We send A LOT of packages every week so don't worry about the shipping side of things!

We've never lost a thing and your awesome new gear will be packed up really well to avoid any damage in transit.

If your order comes in before 2pm we will ship it same day. Most of the time we pack things up all the way to 4pm so just call if you need it to leave same day after 2pm.

We ship mainly with Australia Post but may use a courier depending on location and size of the package.

Free Post ships with Australia Post standard and expected shipping times are between 4-6 business days depending on location. It will be longer to outside of metro and rural areas.

Express Post will usually be with you next business day in metro areas of QLD, NSW, SA, VIC and TAS. WA will take 2 days to metro and extra days after that to out side metro and rural areas.

Everything we ship has a tracking number with the exception of some power cables and smaller envelope packages. You will be emailed tracking once your order has been shipped!