Anasounds Trémolo - A Decent Teaching Pedal

There are a lot of different sources for guitar pedals and kits out there, but one I've come across recently, Anasounds, is just a bit different in a lot of ways. They only have two kits available, well, technically three, but I'll come back to that, and they appear to be mostly focused on hand-built pedals with a fairly wide range available. However, with those two kits, they demonstrate a major focus on the "how to" part of pedal building, including understanding the circuit, tracing it, and really understanding the underlying electronic principles. Their instructions are extensive including methods for testing the circuit at every stage of the build - which is very cool! The downside is that if you go by the instructions, you're building the circuit boards in sub-sections - which can lead to some challenges later on getting components to fit in tight spaces. I've built both of their main kits at this point, and this blog will feature the first build - the Anasounds Trémolo.

The Trémolo is a fairly interesting build in several ways. First, much like my earlier Dimension C build, it is a multi-layer PCB with pin and socket connectors between the boards. It also includes a few pre-soldered SMD devices already in place. Unfortunately one of the boards I received in my kit had been jostled in shipping and one of the SMDs (and its pad) had been sheared off. Anasounds was great about shipping me a new one, though! The board above is the top board, and as you can see, all of the pots and switches are soldered directly to the PCB

The bottom side of the top board includes a toggle switch for tap functionality and the primary IC that runs chip. You can also see the sockets for the pins from the secondary board. Anasounds includes everything you need, but I typically swap out IC sockets for the round hole type in all of my builds. As you can see, some of the wiring is already in place. Anasounds provides solid-core wiring rather than stranded.

Above is the top of the second board with the rest of circuit. Again, at every step of the process you're able to measure voltages and compare them to what they are supposed to be to ensure that everything is working as intended.

The bottom of that board includes trim pots for Bias and Gain which are adjusted as part of the build process. It also includes the vactrol which forms the heart of the optical tremolo itself. The boards are fairly open and assembly is generally not too hard. The only challenge came when adding some of the DIP sockets after other portions of the circuit board were built, but it just required a little dexterity!

As with the pots, the stomp switches are also soldered directly to the main board. The main board is also equipped with set screws and supports to ensure the pedal holds together without issue and is structurally supported. The back of the top board also includes a surface-mounted LED that is visible through the enclosure

The enclosure itself is nice with an etched face plate with a see through "FX" in the center that allows you to see the LED. 

The sides and bottom of the enclosure are bare metal - which works with the overall design aesthetic of the face plate, so I didn't bother trying to paint it. The north face of the enclosure includes the in, out, 9V DC, and an auxiliary out socket. This socket is designed to interface with another Anasounds kit (the third kit mentioned in the introduction). This port is designed to plug into the Spinner - a separate pedal that allows you to control the trem speed by kicking the spinner on that pedal. I'm really not sold on the real world utility of such a device relative to other solutions out there, but I may pick one up down the line just to experiment.

Once the pedal was together and working, I gave it the Steggo seal of approval. In terms of sound and functionality, it's a good pedal with a lot of control options. In a lot of ways it reminds me very much of the Aion Luna - which is another optical tremolo, though with more conventional layout and no tap option. I 've built one of Aion's kits as well, so I should really do a blog entry on it soon!