What is it? 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. 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 res.