Altar

Doom/Sludge Fuzz

## Description

### Graphic

The Hagiophobic face art of the Altar depicts the skull and bones of an antelope (possibly an oryx) between two large candles on top of a small wooden table, off of which hangs a rosary with an inverted cross of Lorraine (or Patriarchal cross). The six control knobs lie at the vertices of a circled, unicursal hexagram, a symbol closely associated with Aleister Crowley's Thelema religious and social movement. The hexagram also contains upright and inverted White Moon Selena symbols.

### Controls

* Bass - Active bass frequency EQ
* Depth - Input saturation, compression, and fuzziness
* Treble - Active treble frequency EQ
* Boost - Output gain of the boost circuit
* Gain - Input gain
* Level - Output master volume
* Range switch - Switches boost type between full-, mid-, and treble-ranges
* Blend - Blends clean signal into distorted signal
* Clip switch - Switches between LED, silicone, and germanium clipping modes
* Boost footswitch - SmartRelay footswitch, toggles boost on and off
* Bypass footswitch - SmartRelay footswitch, engages and bypasses effect
* Doom slide switch (internal) - Increases saturation in all gain stages and boosts bass frequencies

### Jacks

#### Top

* In - Signal input
* 9v - 9 volt, center negative power adaptor input
* Out - Signal output

### Webstore Description

>
> Bring your sacrifices unto the Altar and immanentize the eschaton!
> This dual pedal consisting of a mosfet boost and a high-gain fuzz/distortion circuit delivers lots of low end, sustain and punch. Loosely based on the classic Black Russian Big Muff it´s the perfect weapon for everything from Gilmourish sounds to sludgy Doom and Stoner riff-goodness! A perfectly voiced active 2-band EQ and a depth pot to vary it´s character from tight, distortionesque sounds to a full on sludgy fuzz give you ultimate control over your sound: from classic scooped Muff-sounds to mid-heavy, fuzzy distortion that will cut through every mix. A three way selector lets you choose between different clipping diodes: loud and open LED-clipping, saturated and raunchy silicon clipping like in the original Altar or thecompressed and smooth sound of Germanium-diodes! For the recent iteration we also added a charge pump that increases headroom and loudness of the Altar to unprecedented levels and the “DOOM”-switch: an internal slide-switch that pushes all the gainstages into beast mode! Also new is a blend-pot which blends a clean signal with the Altars heavy distortion making it the perfect weapon for bass-players!
>
>
> The independently footswitchable boost circuit (switchable between full-range, mid and treble boost) adds overtones to your sound, drives your amp that extra bit more or pushes the dirt-section to new levels: never ending walls of droning fuzz, square wave sounds with a hint of glitchy octave: The possibilities are limitless - just take your time to dial it in try out different combinations of both sections!
>
>
> Features:
>
>
>
> * Lichtlaerm Audio Smart Relay technology
> * "Depth" alters the input saturation, compression and fuzziness of the sound
> * 2 band active EQ with fixed mid band
> * “Boost” to control the output of the first section
> * “Gain” & “Volume explain themselves, right?
> * 9V center-negative power supply (13mA) (runs on 27V internally)
>

## History

### 2018

The first appearance of the Altar was on Lichtlaerm Audio's Facebook page on May 16, 2018 as a shared post from artist Hagiophobic (Fabian van Beek). Lichtlaerm marked it as their first pedal and described it as "a brutal High-Gain Muff, that blurs the line between Fuzz and Distortion. It includes an independently footswitchable Boost Circuit three different types of clipping, a mids-control to avoid the typical Muff-scoop and a Depth control that blends between to different input-caps, resulting in a more hazy, muddy fuzz-sound or a brighter distortion!"

In a post from August 19, 2018, Altar was featured as the subject of the first official Lichtlaerm demo video. This version sported metal knobs rather than the original DM-1510 style knobs. The post goes into more detail about the pedal's controls:

* "Depth" alters the input saturation, allowing sounds from vintage fuzzes to more modern fuzz/distortion-hybrid sounds
* "Tone" and "Mids" to sculpt your sound
* "Boost" controls the output of the boost-circuit
* "Gain" sets the input-gain of the fuzz
* "Volume" sets the output of the fuzz-circuit
* "clipping switch":
	+ top = silicon-diodes
	+ middle = no diodes
	+ bottom = LED
* 9V-center negative 2,1mm powersupply -> current draw 10-15mA
* True Bypass

### 2019

The first post of 2019 was the official release of two versions of the Altar MKII. The silver version used new-old stock Russian diodes and transistors fitting of its Sovtek Big Muff based circuit. The gold version used germanium transistors. The MKIIs also denote the official switch to top-mounted jacks.

In a post made on July 22, 2019, Altar MKIII was pictured in a batch of, what was at the time, all four production pedals (Altar MKIII, Trugbild, Gehenna, and The Key and the Gate MKIII).

### 2020

On October 30, 2020, Lichtlaerm announced that a small, ten-piece batch of Altars would be sold at a discount in order to raise money for event venues impacted by an impending Covid-19 lockdown in Germany.

### 2022

After Lichtlaerm operations were quietly put on hold in late 2020, a relaunch of the company was announced on July 1, 2022 with the Altar featured as the second returning pedal on July 4. The relaunched versions of the pedals featured new SmartRelay footswitches and were housed in plain black enclosures with silkscreened graphics replaced by gold plated faceplates mounted to the pedal by pot and switch nuts and washers. The new version of the Alter also added new Range, Blend, and Clip controls not found on earlier versions and an additional, internal slide switch that changes the character of the pedal's saturation and boosts bass frequencies. The internal voltage was also increased to 27 volts.

Altar 2022 Relaunch, 2022/07/04Altar 2022 Relaunch guts, 2022/07/04Altar 2022 Relaunch batch, 2022/07/04

On November 1, 2022, a limited, 5-piece run of black and silver color variant Altars were released alongside color variants of the Aesahaettr, the .Ritual., and the Aquaria.

### 2023

On September 17, 2023, in a post on Lichtlaerm's social media pages regarding Guitar Summit 2023, it was revealed that all pedals in production going forward would feature white text and pedals with dual footswitches (except for the two reverb pedals, the Transcendence and the Untiefe) would feature dual bi-color LED indicators rather than a single bi-color LED.

## Videos

### 2020

* January 23 - Masterlab Academy (with Gehenna, Trugbild)
* July 16 - Sentient Sonic Machines
* September 24 - Sentient Sonic Machines (with Electronic Audio Experiments Model feT, smallsound/bigsound fuck)

### 2022

* August 24 - siets96
* August 26 - Metalhead Productions (with .Ritual.)
* September 18 - Truck Driver Shawn, SOUNDFARE
* October 4 - Room89
* October 16 - SOUNDFARE
* November 18 - Fuzzed Drones Gear Reviews
* December 9 - SOUNDFARE
* December 11 - Gear Forest (bass)

### 2023

* January 16 - PedalTVchannel
* February 18 - Dennis Kayzer
* March 28 - SOUNDFARE (bass)
* October 4 - Mad Steex (feature explanation by Daniel with full Guitar Summit 2023 line)
* November 13 - Ens\_Bass (bass with the King in Yellow, Medusa, Gehenna, Aquaria, and Electric Roots Meatgrinder, Lilith v1, and Lilith v2)
* December 2 - dots.sounds (with other Big Muff circuit pedals)