We perform a detailed study of perturbations around 2-charge circular fuzz-balls and compare the results with the ones obtained in the case of ‘small’ BHs. In addition to the photon-sphere modes that govern the prompt ring-down, we also find a branch of long-lived QNMs localised inside the photon-sphere at the (meta)stable minimum of the radial effective potential. The latter are expected to dominate late time signals in the form of ‘echoes’. Moreover, contrary to ‘small’ BHs, some ‘static’ tidal Love numbers are non-zero and independent of the mass, charges and angular momentum of the fuzz-ball. We rely on the recently established connection between BH or fuzz-ball perturbation theory and quantum Seiberg-Witten curves for $$ \mathcal{N} $$
N
= 2 SYM theories, which in turn are related to Liouville CFT via the AGT correspondence. We test our results against numerical results obtained with Leaver’s method of continuous fractions or Breit-Wigner resonance method for direct integration and with the WKB approximation based on geodesic motion. In the probe approximation, we also exclude rotational super-radiance, due to the absence of an ergo-region, and absorption, due to the absence of a horizon.