Anasounds
In 2004 a 12 years old Alexandre Ernandez’s father bought him his first guitar and so started a love affair with the likes of ACDC, Nirvana, Guns n Roses, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath.
Being from a family of musicians Alex was trapped in the best trap ever.
After a short time using digital equipment at home Alex quickly became aware of the benefits of well made analog gear when gigging and thus searched the internet for ways to improve his rig the old fashioned DIY way. He then went on to study Electronics throughout the remainder of his education.
The iconic Anasounds design of wood on aluminium enclosures came as a result of Alex’s better half Magali. It's safe to say this was a good move as the design stands out on any pedalboard.
And in 2014 they decided to create a company called Anasounds.
Today Anasounds 8 pedals covering fuzz and overdrives through to delays and the unique Elements true spring reverb with a choice of 3 sizes of tanks.
The future looks bright for this Nice based company and not simply because the weathers nice there.
Stacked Not Switched Today's market includes a multitude of double pedals, since the release of Analog Mans King Of Tone the world and their father have offered up drives and fuzzes with a second switchable circuit. This surely crossed Anasounds mind when they teamed up with Julien Bitoun to produce their dual fuzz circuit. But let's be straight here, this is fuzz! Fuzz isnât about your dynamics or preserving transparency. Fuzz is about making as much noise ad possible. The Bitoun Fuzz rams one fuzz straight into the other giving you just two knobs and a bypass switch ... BOOM. Taking inspiration from 60âs super fuzz designs while addressing âlost in the mixâ syndrome, this is a pedal all fuzz lovers have to try!
ADDC ... Not quite Normally amp style pedals are aimed at a specific amp or player and in a way the High Voltage from Anasounds is both. Occasionally though we see something which isn't quite a signature bit of gear but more a way of capturing a moment in time. The tones of AC/DC are Rock music perfection, a Marshall Plexi pushed to its limits with humbuckers as heard on the iconic album Its A Long Way To The Top.Anasounds analysed the rhythm tones here to recreate them in a stomp box which finally became the Anasounds High Voltage. But wait ... did it work, how does it sound ... Have a play with the tonepedia player and compare it to pedals such as the original Marshall pedals and the Carl Martin Plexi tone. You decide which sounds best to you!
It has its ups and downs Anasounds define tremolo as "a cyclical volume variation from the original volume to a decreased version (all the way to the extreme version of the effect which completely cuts the sound in a rhythmic fashion) following a set tempo."TonePedia defines tremolo as "That lovely warming movement heard in many songs and you never even knew it was there"Tremolo is one of those effects most players feel they can live without ... until they try it. Anasounds have worked hard to maintain your original signal, using no digital witchcraft in the signal chain but there is some digital magic in the controls. This allows for some cool tricks including tap tempo, subdivisions, kill dry, self-oscillation by holding down the tap footswitch, and most innovative of all .. you can easily update this analog pedal with new and improved chips Anasounds will offer along the road. Use the Anasounds Optical Tremolo with the spinner expression pedal to get effects never before possible!Try this alongside the Ages harmonic tremolo from Anasounds and many others on TonePedia
The Good, The Bad & The Springy Reverb pedals are a funny anomaly in the pedal world. Many pedal nuts will tell you how digital pedals just don't sound right, sometimes its the highs which sound a little like static other times its the predictability of how they behave (yep that's right, there's even complaints about that!).When it comes to reverb however we lap them up ... why? Because there aren't very many analog reverbs and those which do exists are quite big. In a world where pedals are fighting for the limited pedalboard real-estate, dedicating 1/4 of that space to a single pedal seems nuts. When Anasounds were challenged with creating a pedal which sounded like a Fender Twin's reverb they initially went towards the analog route but quickly realised the only way to truly recreate the tones was with a spring tank as found in the original amp. The way to work around the size problem was genius, have the spring tank and the controls separate! On your board you simply have an MXR sized pedal with controls for the reverb but the sound comes from one of 3 possible spring tanks. The tanks can sit under the board or even on top of an amp. Whats more the three tanks all do something different:Le Bon (The Good)The smallest tank and pretty unique in tone. Best suited to more modern tones but still capable of some truly massive ambiance. The saturation switch behaves in a great way on this tank. 180 x 60 x 40 mmLa Brute (The Bad) More towards the traditional sounding reverb while still being very size conscious. Harmonically richer than Le Bon and more conveniently sized than Le Traund 235 x 84 x 40 mm.And Le Truand (The Ugly)The biggest tank and by the one which will provide all the traditional amp reverb you could ever dream of. This is a truly big tank and fitting it under your board will be a squeeze if even possible. However the tones are more than worth it.425 x 109 x 40 cm.Whats more, Elements allows us to adapt tone adjustments to the reverbs in a way only normally seen on digital pedals AND you can even drive the springs with a flip of the saturation switch!All in all its easy to see why this has been a best seller across the world, now you can go try the 3 tanks to decide which suits your needs best, have fun.
Modern Classic is a very overused term, does it apply to the Utopia? When we think of analog drives most originated back in the 80âs and even the likes of the original memory man showing up in 1976. We all love the tones of tape delays but the analog delays were destined to help us break free from the amp sized machines and to provide an entire new delay sound which defined a lot of music there after. So to enter their analog delay into the mix in 2016 its fair to say Anasounds had to pull off something special to stand out ⦠and they did. On the face of it the Utopia is a relatively simple pedal, mix, repeats and delay speed knobs allow us to get great tones straight out of the box which when using the mod switch effectively will lean towards the lush tape sound off old. It is possible to go even deeper inside to tune the tone and overall speed to your own style, once set youâll have a very uniquely beautiful looking pedal which sounds just as good as it looks. Try it for yourself and let us know on our Facebook page what you think of the Anasounds Utopia.
It has its ups and downs then down a bit more than up a bit..The world of harmonic tremolos such as the Ages from Anasounds can be a confusing one, the first obvious connection is with straight up and down volume swell type tremolo but it crosses into territory such as vibe, rotary speaker, vibrato, and so on. Sometimes its best just to listen to an effect and feel what it does for you personally. Anasounds worked hard to maintain your original signal, using a hybrid system the entire signal path is analog yet the controls have a digital brain. There are some cool tricks up the ages sleeves including tap tempo, subdivisions, kill dry, self-oscillation by holding down the tap footswitch, and most innovative of all .. you can easily update this analog pedal with new and improved chips Anasounds will offer along the road. The pedal can also react dynamically to your playing by ramping up the speed when you play faster and harder.Use the Ages with the spinner expression pedal to get effects never before possible!Try this alongside the Silver tremolo from Anasounds and many others on TonePedia
Golden Horse Man Type Thing As far as pedals go the Klon is the Rolls Royce of our world. Clouded in secrecy for many years due to "gloop" added to the circuit to hide its secrets the industry looked on in shock as the resale value soared.Then one day a clever and intuitive person managed to "de-gloop" a Klon finally revealing its secrets to the world of pedal builders.This was the pedal which made the word "transparent" an everyday gear heads buzzword, this is because your rigs tones still shine while adding the drive. Anasounds haven't simply kloned the Klon they've taken thee topology, smoothed out the gain tones and made the higher gain tones almost fuzz like while still maintaining the transparency the original pedals are famous for. Try for yourself how this beast reacts differently to the variety of pick up options.