Jack White of the Black Stripes’ fame has regularly collaborated with several pedal companies to manufacture a variety of rigorously black and yellow stompboxes exclusively sold through his label Third Man’s store. The latest collaboration is with French boutique brand Anasound, known for their beautiful wooden enclosures, and for a popular spring reverb system with remote spring tanks called Element. The fruit of this collaboration is also a (real) spring reverb, called Le Grotte.
This may seem like one of the least weird pedals released by Third Man, but it’s not necessarily a classic real spring reverb. The three springs give it a more dense and modern sound compared to classic spring reverbs, and the high input impedance combined with low output impedance make it play nice with any other pedal, which is unusual for this type of circuit.
Also, a fade in / fade out system avoids any splash sounds from footswitch activation on stage, an issue affecting many real spring pedals.
Separate Low and Wet knobs allow to precisely set the amount of reverb and original signal, while a useful 2/knob EQ section allows taming of the low end under 700Hz and the high-end above 1.6kHz.
The signal is fed to the springs via a warm-sounding preamp based on the Tone Oven by French builder Tampco, whose level can be tweaked for extra cleanliness or saturation via an internal Gain trim pot.
Anasound + Third Man La Grotte, Builder’s Notes
La Grotte is an analog spring reverb collaboration between Anasounds and Third Man hardware.
It is a mechanical reverb with an integrated three-spring tank, included is a very warm preamp with a strong character, along with an ultra-effective two-band EQ (which only affects the reverb itself). Separate volume controls for direct sound and reverb sound give you access to the ideal mix you’ve always been looking for.
Whatever your sound aesthetic may be, vintage or modern, blues or pop, garage or soul, you’ll get that tone with this reverb.
?La Grotte includes new tonal sounds pulled from the Anasounds element pedal and le bon pedal in one single box.
- 100% analog and mechanic
- Dry/Wet setting
- 2 band EQ
- ?includes ?a?n embedded preamp based on Tampco’s Tone Oven.
- High quality spring tanks from Accutronics/Belton in Korea
- A gain control is available inside to crunch even more or even less?.
- A -10dB pad is available inside to plug any line input easily
- You can activate or deactivate it internally
- The EQ has a low cut of 700Hz and a high cut of 1.6kHz
- Tons of headroom available.
- The bypass has 2 modes : True bypass or buffered bypass
- You can select them with a toggle switch in side.
- On buffered bypass, when you bypass the pedal, we leave the tails die with elegance.
- On true bypass, when you bypass it, you shut down everything abruptly.
- Input impedance is very high and output impedance is very low which makes the system not sensitive to any other pedals. Then you can plug it anywhere in the signal chain, which is uncommon for such a vintage effect.
