Champion Leccy The Swan Hunter

The Swan Hunter is a lo-fi echo and reverb pedal from Champion Leccy, the one-person operation of Woolly (Wool Robson), who designs and assembles every pedal by hand in a South Philadelphia rowhome¹. It runs two wet signal paths at once: a tape-style echo built on a PT2399 delay chip, the same chip as the Woozy, and a reverb built on a Belton brick, the same as The Skitter².

The maker describes its range as running from "warm analogue style slapback like repeats and clean belton brick reverb, to wibbly tape echo and oscillating reverb, through to super lofi fuzzy noise chaos"³. Delicious Audio's lo-fi pedals buying guide groups it with pedals built around analog tape artifacts⁴.

What it does to your sound

The pedal is laid out in two rows. The top row of knobs and switches controls the reverb, and the bottom row controls the echo¹. Dry, reverb and echo each have their own volume controls, so you can set the balance of the two wet paths against your clean signal independently³.

Both the echo and the reverb have a ducking and expansion control that reacts to playing dynamics, which the maker says creates unique gating effects: play harder and the effect opens up, stop playing and it closes down³. The reverb side also has a feedback control, called fog, that lengthens the reverb tails, and around 3 o'clock on that knob the maker says it enters oscillation territory³.

On the echo side, the memory knob sets delay time with what the maker calls wibbly, tape-like repeats, and it can be combined with the history control to add character to otherwise steady repeats³.

Parallel or series, and the fx loop

The confluence control in the reverb row blends between putting the reverb in parallel with the echo or in series with it, and when in series the reverb sits after the echo³. In practice that is the difference between hearing two distinct wet sounds side by side and hearing your repeats washed in reverb.

The pedal also has an fx loop send and return wired into the feedback path. With nothing plugged in, the feedback loop is connected internally. The send is a shunt jack, so plugging something into it breaks the feedback loop, which means the haunt control stops working and only a single echo is heard. Plugging the pedal's own output into the fx loop return completes the feedback loop again, now controlled by the haunt knob³. That jack arrangement lets you put another pedal inside the feedback path.

The second footswitch

There are two footswitches. The left one is labeled brake/break and serves two functions². RockBoard's PedalPedia describes it as providing "silent oscillation breaking and lofi noisy performance traits"⁵, so it can be used to stop a runaway oscillation quietly, or to bring in lo-fi noise as a performance effect.

Not a modulation pedal

Woolly is direct about what the pedal is not: "It isn't a modulation pedal, there's no LFO"². Any wobble in the repeats comes from the PT2399 chip's tape-style behavior and the feedback controls rather than from a modulation source. In Champion Leccy's own function comparison table across its range, the Swan Hunter's listed functions include the Belton brick reverb, echo, reverb tremolo, tape sounds, oscillation, resonant echo, resonant reverb and tap tempo, with two wet signal paths².

Designer, launch, and limited finish

The Swan Hunter was designed by Woolly, and all Champion Leccy pedals are designed and assembled by hand in a South Philly rowhome¹². He introduced it on the Champion Leccy site on July 31, 2021, writing that it "does have some gritty tape echo sounds, haunting reverbs, gated echo and lofi noise to mess around with"². The launch was set for Friday the 13th of August at noon EST, with the regular screen printed version at $275 retail². A special finish was available for the launch, costing a little bit more². The current listed price is $295.00 USD as of October 2026¹.

The finishes listed on the current product page are black, evening blue, purple dusk and purple dusk (blem)¹.

Power and build

The Swan Hunter takes a standard BOSS style +9V DC center negative power supply, which is not supplied with the pedal, and draws an average of 125mA¹. RockBoard's PedalPedia lists the circuit as analog and notes it is housed in a durable stompbox enclosure⁵.

Videos

Click to load

Click to load

Click to load

Questions