Anasounds Dystopia

The Anasounds Dystopia is a delay pedal from French maker Anasounds, inspired by the Utopia Deluxe but, in Anasounds' own words, "noisier and more experimental"¹. It uses the same PT2399 delay chip as the Utopia Deluxe, but the delay has a dirty voicing made even more obvious by a noisier and crunchier preamp, which RockBoard's PedalPedia describes as more of a booster than an overdrive, placed after the delay². It was released as a limited edition in December 2023³.

Where the Utopia Deluxe is the cleaner, vintage tape echo style pedal, the Dystopia is the dirtier, old worn tape sounding experimental version of the same circuit family²⁴. Delicious Audio described it as a pedal that "can transform your guitar into a noisy, unconventional tool"⁵.

What the Dystopia does

At the heart of the pedal is the PT2399 chip, the same one used in the Utopia Deluxe, chosen for what Anasounds calls the nice analog-voiced sound of the PT2399 circuit⁶². The Utopia Deluxe runs two PT2399 chips, giving 800ms of clean delay and 1000ms of dirty delay⁸. The Dystopia takes that analog-voiced foundation and pushes it toward worn-out tape character.

Part of that character comes from how Anasounds handled the PT2399's inherent noise. In the Utopia Deluxe manual, the maker explains that engineering the Dystopia led to a way of significantly reducing the chip's noise by creating a kind of "noise gate"⁹. For the Dystopia, Anasounds chose to leave that behavior in, and the manual puts it this way:

Anasounds, Utopia DLX user manual⁹

The effect is that repeats can fade or disappear spontaneously, which Anasounds presents as part of the charm of aging magnetic tape rather than a flaw⁹. The pedal also carries a vintage preamp before the delay, a feature shared with the Utopia Deluxe⁷, and in the Dystopia that preamp is voiced crunchier, sitting after the delay as more of a booster².

Guitar Pedal X named the Dystopia among its best new time-based effects of 2023, calling it a "Really cool PT2399 Delay with a more worn-out Tape Sound - Crazy 'Pain' Modulation, and a 4-step sequencer"⁴. The same review noted one limitation: "This is a Mono delay - so not really perfect for me"⁴.

The controls

The Pain knob is the pedal's signature control. It adjusts the built-in modulation with four types to choose from, and for each type you can control speed and depth. Delicious Audio summed up its range as "transitioning from gentle motion to absolute destruction"⁵. The knob also programs a built-in four-step sequencer¹⁴.

The Preamp knob handles the crunchier gain stage, adjusting both gain and volume in one control, with an indicator light showing when the preamp is active⁶.

Four modulation types

The Pain knob's four modulation types cover a wide spread of textures¹⁵:

• Tape echo: the wobble and character of aging tape
• Vibrato: pitch modulation
• Lo-fi: degraded, low-fidelity repeats
• Ring mod: ring modulator effects on the repeats

Each type has its own zone on the Pain knob, and within that zone the knob controls both speed and depth of the modulation¹⁵.

Power and bypass

The Dystopia runs on 9V DC, center negative, drawing 133mA². At that current draw it needs a proper power supply rather than a battery. The bypass can be set to true bypass or buffered bypass⁷.

Where it came from

The Dystopia is part of Anasounds' Utopia delay family. It uses the same PT2399 chip as the Utopia Deluxe, but the delay has a dirty voicing made even more obvious by a noisier and crunchier preamp, more of a booster than an overdrive placed after the delay²⁶. In engineering the Dystopia, Anasounds found a way to significantly reduce the noise of the PT2399 by creating a kind of "noise"⁹.

In December 2023, Anasounds launched the Utopia Deluxe and the limited-edition Dystopia together, positioning the Utopia as the cleaner vintage tape echo style pedal and the Dystopia as the dirtier, old worn tape sounding experimental version²⁴. Guitar Pedal X later noted the pair's release date: "It's been a while since we got the Deluxe and Dystopia Utopia Editions - December 2023 in fact"³.

The Dystopia was a limited edition that could only be ordered for two weeks, from December 1 to 17, 2023, at a pre-order price of 349 euros¹⁶. The first 250 pedals were delivered on time for the holiday season, with the following batch delivered in early 2024⁶. Pre-orders are now closed on the Anasounds website, with remaining units available at retailers while stocks last¹.

The pedal is built in France, down to a bamboo faceplate on the enclosure that is laser-etched in the Anasounds workshop⁶.

Videos

Click to load

Click to load

Click to load

News

Questions