Is there anything Jack White doesn’t have his hands in? The legendary musician, serial collaborator, and entrepreneur has been making hay for his Third Man Hardware company by partnering with select brands like Donner, Fender, and MXR to create musical gear aligned with his eclectic vision.
Now you can add French boutique pedal-maker Anasounds to the list. Nearly all these musical-product collaborations have sported contrasting yellows and blacks and symbolic pattern motifs that he’s adopted as his “Jack White-ish” signature.
Appearances aside, White has unveiled some seriously good and offbeat musical instruments and pedals that serve his idiosyncratic lo-fi style. His latest partnership with Anasounds introduces a fascinatingly great and pedalboard-friendly spring reverb stompbox (with an actual spring tank housed inside the pedal!) called La Grotte.
What is it?
For linguaphiles, La Grotte means “The Cave” in French, which makes perfect sense for this deep, grungy reverb.
A little background: White was so enamored with Anasounds’ Element Spring Reverb (a “two-part” pedal where the Element serves as the preamp that’s hooked into an external Anasounds spring tank offered in three sizes) that he wanted the La Grotte to be an all-in-one pedal where the spring tank is built into the pedal’s enclosure.
Even more challenging was that White demanded three springs instead of two for more authentic reverberation.
After many prototypes and modifications, the result is a ruggedly built, one-of-a-kind analog spring reverb with a visually striking, engraved surface and a plexiglass faceplate to observe its three springs actively vibrate.
Specs
Launch price: $300/€349
Type: Reverb pedal
Controls: Dry, Wet, Low, High
Features: Genuine mechanical spring reverb from three springs; preamp based on Tampco’s Tone Oven, internal gain controls,
Connectivity: 1/4" input/outputs, power supply input (top-mounted)
Bypass: Both (switchable)
Power:
Dimensions: 100x100x100 mm
Weight: 0.1kg
Options: Limited edition black-and-yellow swirl (exclusive to Reverb.com)
Contact Anasounds
Usability
Usability rating: ★★★★☆
The La Grotte is unlike most other analog reverb stompboxes because its built-in preamp (based on Tampco’s Tone Oven pedal) directly affects its splashy and saturated reverb sound.
Two knobs for Dry and Wet are dual volume knobs that govern the reverb mix and can increasingly boost or clip either signal into overdrive. The Low and High controls are a two-band EQ that only affects the tone of the reverb sound.
For added versatility, the pedal features an internal gain control, an internal bypass switch for selecting true or buffered bypass (preserves reverb tails), and an internal -10dB input level pad. Finally, you’ll need a 9V DC power supply to operate it.
One thing that’s clear to me is that the La Grotte is not your traditional spring reverb, which makes it engagingly absorbing and frustrating.
It’s sensitive to where you set the dual Wet/Dry volumes and, for that, you’ll want to tailor the EQ of the reverb accordingly. Incidentally, if you move the pedal, you’ll hear that reverb crashing sound (which is kinda cool).
Sounds
Sounds rating: ★★★★☆
Overall, it’s a saturated reverb with a boingy, surf-like character, and I believe many garage and lo-fi pedal junkies are going to flip over La Grotte’s seductively dark and grungy splash.
Boosting the Dry volume and dialing back the Wet puts the reverb in the background while adding a cavernous ambience to your tone
Even the onboard preamp is transparent and full, with a warmly overdriven tone as you turn it up. However, doing so impacts the reverb.
Those deep reverberations come with some cloudiness, so, to make it respond like a guitar amp’s reverb, boosting the Dry volume and dialing back the Wet puts the reverb in the background while adding a cavernous ambience to your tone.
However, increasing the Wet volume will saturate the reverb, making it slightly muddy, and for some players, there’s a certain charm here. Either way, the La Grotte allows you to find a reverberated middle ground or go to extremes. It’s gorgeous and ugly, and there’s beauty in that.
Verdict
Designed by Anasounds and Jack White, the La Grotte is a remarkable achievement as a fully analog spring reverb pedal with a built-in spring tank and a preamp for a dark and grungy reverb.
: Also try
($499/£430/€449)
One for spring reverb die-hards. The unit that inspired La Grotte is available individually or as a bundle with three different reverb tank sizes. It is brighter and more vintage sounding but has no preamp.
($229/£199)
An affordable, compact and convincing digital emulation of spring reverb that pairs nicely with clean and driven amps.
Our review
($359/£299)
CTC's revised White Whale similarly contains a real mechanical spring – and it has tremolo for that vintage amp sound. It's also very tweakable.
