Anasounds Utopia Deluxe

The Anasounds Utopia Deluxe is a delay pedal from French maker Anasounds, first released in December 2023 as an upgraded, ground-up redesign of the company's original Utopia delay¹². It is an analog-voiced delay built on two PT2399 chips, giving 800ms of clean delay and 1000ms of dirty delay¹, with tap tempo, subdivisions, a Tone control, a switchable preamp and a central Bliss knob that handles modulation³².

Anasounds describes the redesign as "a brand new voicing for an even more musical delay" that is more fun to play³. The preamp section is inspired by the Echoplex EP-3 of the 1970s, the tape echo preamp stage that later became well known on its own through boost pedals⁴⁵.

The controls

The Deluxe carries six knobs, twin toggle switches and twin footswitches¹. The delay side is straightforward: Mix sets the repeat level, Feedback sets how many repeats, and Time sets the delay length from 80ms to 1000ms². A Tone control shapes the EQ of the repeats, from brighter to darker³⁷.

The preamp is the Echoplex EP-3-inspired section, and it is switchable: a toggle puts it in "always on", "always off" or "on when the delay is active" mode, with its own level knob³²⁴.

The two footswitches are a Bypass switch and a Tap Tempo switch². The tap tempo switch gives three subdivisions, eighth, quarter and the classic dotted eighth, and holding it down launches infinite repeats and self-oscillation³². Getting tap tempo to work on a PT2399-based delay was not trivial: Guitar Pedal X reported it took Anasounds' engineers three years to perfect¹.

The pedal ships in True Bypass mode, which cuts the effect completely when disengaged. You can switch it to a Tails mode, where bypass becomes buffered so repeats ring out instead of being cut, by holding the Bypass footswitch while reconnecting power until the left LED flashes three times⁶.

The Bliss knob's three modulation zones

The central Bliss knob is the Deluxe's modulation control, and it works in zones rather than with separate rate and depth knobs. At 0 the modulation is deactivated; turning the knob up moves through three preset sections that each set the modulation type, depth and rate automatically³⁶.

The TAPE section is designed to get close to the typical sonic movement of a vintage tape echo, with the depth increasing over the first third of the knob's range while the rate decreases⁵. Delicious Audio described the same behavior in simpler terms: subtle tape style in the first third of the knob's range, chorus in the second third, and vibrato in the last third⁷. Pedal of the Day noted that the knob switches from one modulation preset to another and simultaneously affects the modulation type, the depth and the rate⁴.

History and versions

The original Utopia delay came out ten years before the Utopia Mk2, which Anasounds released in September 2025, putting the first Utopia around 2015⁸⁹. The original was calibrated for echoes from 0 to 400ms and could go up to 600ms, built on a single PT2399 chip [5 is not used; see note]. The Utopia Deluxe arrived in December 2023 as a ground-up redesign of that circuit, adding tap tempo, subdivisions, the onboard preamp and the Bliss knob³²¹⁰.

In 2025 Anasounds marked the Utopia's tenth anniversary with the Utopia Mk2, a compact edition that carries some of the Deluxe's improvements but not all of them. The Mk2 uses one PT2399 chip instead of two, which Anasounds says gives it incredibly low background noise compared with the Deluxe version, and it drops the tap tempo and preamp⁸⁹. Its modulation is handled by a three-way switch: center disables it, the upper position gives subtle tape-echo style modulation, and the lower position gives customizable modulation via internal Rate and Depth trimpots⁹.

What reviewers said

Pedal of the Day reviewed the Utopia Deluxe in February 2024 and called it "an amazing pedal creation," praising its load of echo tones and warm vintage preamp character⁴. The review described the sound as "not unlike a very well set up tape echo or an analog delay, without the problems of that design and with actual treble in the repeats," noting that the PT2399 chip from the original Utopia was the starting point but the way it is used was redesigned⁴.

Guitar Pedal X's 2025 coverage of the Mk2 editions offered a comparative view: the Mk2 editions are "very obviously improved over the MK1," but the writer judged that players would likely get the maximum benefit from the Deluxe overall².

The original Utopia got attention on That Pedal Show in 2019, where the hosts found it "sounds fantastic" and does a good old-fashioned slapback, and suspected the internal modulation depth could go deeper¹¹.

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