Anasounds lets Third Man team test La Grotte prototypes at NAMM 2024

January 1, 2024 · 2 sources

Anasounds met the Third Man Hardware team at the NAMM Show in January 2024 to let them test the most advanced prototypes of La Grotte, the French maker's analog spring reverb developed with Jack White. Anasounds describes the meeting as the point at which the collaboration was sealed.

The project began after White bought an Anasounds Element, the maker's spring reverb, in 2021¹. Anasounds dates the Element's release to 2019². White then proposed a collaboration with Third Man Hardware, his gear brand, and sent his first draft for La Grotte in 2023¹. According to Anasounds, White wanted an Element reverb with the spring integrated directly into the main pedal body, with slightly different settings, and in Third Man's black and yellow finish².

At NAMM, Anasounds showed the Third Man team innovations including a system to avoid spring noise when the pedal is switched on². The production pedal houses a three-spring tank inside the main enclosure, a preamp based on the Tone Oven by Tampco, and a two-band EQ that affects only the reverberated sound¹. It has independent dry and wet volumes rather than a single Mix control, and two recalibrated EQ bands rather than a single Tone control². A pad adjusts input level from 0dB to -10dB for studio outboard use, and an internal trimpot sets the preamp gain¹. Anasounds lists buffered bypass, an anti-pop system with fade-in and fade-out of the reverb sound, and input and output impedance designed to work with synth, active bass and brass¹.

Anasounds counts more than 200 components, at least 400 hours of development and some 9,500 hours of production for the first thousand pedals². The maker calls La Grotte its most complex enclosure to date². Anasounds lists the price at 349 euros including 20% VAT¹; no US price is given.