Anasounds Savage

The Anasounds Savage is an overdrive pedal handmade in France by Anasounds, first launched in 2015 as the company's first overdrive¹. Anasounds describes it as "a warm and powerful overdrive inspired by the legendary centaur," meaning the Klon Centaur, and says it reshaped that transparent-overdrive concept with its own engineering rather than copying it²³. The maker says the Savage "will provide you clean and overdrive at the same time," which is the hallmark of the transparent overdrive family: your base tone stays present while the drive stage adds saturation on top².

The current version is the mk2, which Anasounds aimed to make "as transparent as possible"⁴. The pedal sits in a mahogany wood enclosure, measuring 14 × 7 × 5 cm and weighing 0,45 kg².

Clean and overdrive at the same time

The Savage belongs to the transparent overdrive family. Anasounds says it kept "the vintage electronic structure to maximize warmness and tone dynamic," and the pedal runs on Texas Instruments OPA integrated circuits with what the maker calls "OPA dynamic 40v effective," a raised internal operating voltage intended to give the circuit more headroom². The gain control blends saturated and clean sound and can push the overdrive to saturate further³.

The Savage was the pedal that started the company: "It is with the Savage that the Anasounds journey really began"⁴. The first-generation MkI later returned in a new format as the Anasounds Sandman dual overdrive, which the maker's manual calls "the MkI, the fan-favorite first-generation Savage, back in a brand-new format"¹.

The controls, including five internal trimmers

Outside, the Savage keeps it simple with three knobs: gain, out and tone. The tone control is described by the maker as "a real tone and not a treble booster"²³.

Inside, there are five internal adjustments, which is where much of the pedal's flexibility lives⁵:

Guitar Pedal X described the MKII's internal setup as "2 additional trim-pots, Voicing and Light/LED, alongside 3 x 2-way Switches, Treble Boost, OD_Bass Boost and Germanium/Silicon Clipping internal, not externally accessible"⁶. So while the front panel is minimal, the trimming options cover clipping character, bass and treble response, and overall voicing.

Power and connections

The Savage runs on an external 9V DC supply with negative polarity, drawing 22.9 mA, with a hum and noise filter built into the pedal². There is no battery option in the maker's specifications, so it needs a power supply or an isolated pedalboard output. Input impedance is 260 kΩ and output impedance 1.8 kΩ². Switching is gold true bypass²; Anasounds has also written about true bypass generally on its site, discussing whether it is always the best approach².

Versions and limited editions

The Savage family has branched out over the years. The main versions:

• Savage MkI (2015): the original, the first Anasounds overdrive¹.
• Savage mk2: the current version, which Anasounds moved toward "an overdrive as transparent as possible"⁴.
• Savage Originale mk1 reissue: a reissue of the large-body mk1, brought back by customer demand. Anasounds says the mk1 "had the particularity to sound warmer and more vintage than the mk2," and describes it as warm and extremely responsive to playing dynamics, suited to rock, pop, folk or blues. It adds a second front-panel switch for exploring different clippings⁴.
• Extended Savage: a limited edition "between the mk1 and the mk2, in a small footprint," using the same circuit board with tone, gain and output volume controls plus a clipping switch and a voicing pot. The clipping switch jumps between silicon and germanium diodes⁷⁸.
• B-stock: the same pedal with some aesthetic defects from manufacturing, sold with the same audio guarantee. It was listed at 159,19 €, down from an original 209,00 €⁵.

There were also two double-pedal limited editions. The Savage & High Voltage ltd edition put one Savage and one High Voltage overdrive in the same enclosure, a format Anasounds called "a double overdrive pedal," with external bass cut, chain invert switch, gain, out and tone controls, and a single 9V supply on the back that is duplicated, separated and filtered to feed both circuits⁹. The Savage & Cerberus ltd edition paired the Savage with the Cerberus overdrive, which has three voicings, and added a switch on the Savage side to jump from silicon to germanium clipping. Both pedals in these editions are true bypass with relay switching and a soft click footswitch¹⁰.

Where it came from and where it is made

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