Anasounds Cerberus

The Anasounds Cerberus is an overdrive pedal handmade in France by Anasounds, the maker behind the Savage and Ego Driver. Anasounds describes it as a "very transparent overdrive that keeps all the quality of your clear sound while finding the desired saturated harmonics"¹. What sets it apart from most overdrives is its enclosure: the Cerberus is built into a mahogany wood box rather than the usual folded steel, and its clipping character is selectable in three steps, which Anasounds maps to jazz, blues or rock styles¹.

The pedal runs on a standard 9V DC supply, draws only 5.5 mA, and passes signal through gold true bypass switching when disengaged¹.

Three clipping styles in one pedal

The Cerberus gets its range from a selectable clipping stage. Anasounds gives the pedal three voicing steps, which the company describes as covering jazz, blues or rock styles¹. The maker's product page describes the circuit as offering soft clipping via an LED, and hard clipping with silicon diodes of different threshold voltages depending on the selected position².

The earlier Cerberus Custom Overdrive, reviewed by Pedal of the Day in April 2015, spelled out the three positions of its clipping diode selection switch in detail³:

In practice, the position of the switch changes how hard and how symmetrically the signal is clipped, which moves the pedal from a softer, more compressed drive to a harder-edged, more open saturation. Pedal of the Day's reviewer, Mike B, summed up the Custom Overdrive as "one nice overdrive, with a tone of tones and options as well, making it useful in any given musical situation"³.

For players comparing it with familiar circuits, Guitar Pedal X's Stefan Karlsson placed the Cerberus in a known family in his 2020 compact overdrive roundup⁴:

That comparison matters for players who like the general feel of a Tube Screamer but want a flatter midrange response. The same roundup listed the Cerberus Custom Overdrive at £199⁴.

The controls, outside and inside

The current Cerberus carries four external controls and four internal controls¹.

The external volume control is no slouch either: on the Cerberus Custom Overdrive, Pedal of the Day reported that it "is capable of delivering up to +12db in boost"³, which lets the pedal double as a level boost at the end of a gain stage.

The internal trimmers are where the deeper tweaking happens. Anasounds says the internal tone trimmer adjusts the frequency range of the external tone knob², and Pedal of the Day's review of the Custom Overdrive described a Roll Off trimpot that "either adds loudness to your overdriven signal, or it can also add boost and saturation, depending which way you turn it"³. The review counted four internal controls in total on that version³.

Power and connections

The Cerberus runs on an external 9V DC supply with negative polarity, and Anasounds fits a hum and noise filter inside the pedal to keep the power supply quiet¹. Current draw is 5.5 mA¹, low enough that the pedal sits comfortably on a shared supply with other compact stomps. The circuit is built around Texas Instruments OPA integrated circuits running at 9V¹.

Input impedance is 210 kΩ and output impedance is 11 kΩ¹, figures that suit it to being placed either first in a chain or after other low-impedance pedals.

The wood enclosure and where it is made

The Cerberus is housed in a mahogany wood enclosure¹, one of the few production pedals built this way. On the earlier Cerberus Custom Overdrive, Pedal of the Day noted that "the carved wood top is a beautiful and aesthetically pleasing design feature"³. Anasounds states that all of its pedals are handmade in France, and the company makes its jacks in house as well².

Versions and related pedals

Anasounds has sold the Cerberus in a few forms over the years:

• Cerberus: the current overdrive, listed at 249,00 €¹.
• Cerberus B-stock: a unit with cosmetic imperfections but the same audio guarantee, listed at 183,19 € against an original price of 229,00 €⁵.
• Savage & Cerberus ltd edition: one Savage and one Cerberus circuit in the same enclosure, with both pedals true bypass using relay switching and soft click footswitches. Its 9V supply is duplicated, separated and filtered internally to feed both circuits without noise⁶.
• Cerberus Custom Overdrive: the earlier version reviewed by Pedal of the Day in 2015, with the three-position clipping switch and four internal controls³.

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