Anasounds Utopia Tape Echo Delay

With their unique wooden tops and intriguing control layouts, the pedals from Anasounds in France are instantly recognizable, and we love to check ’em out here at Pedal of the Day. Since reviewing the Cerberus and Freq Up last year, we stumbled across a sweet, short-style delay/echo with some modulation for added depth. Producing sounds like the Echoplex, Binson Echorec and the Skreddy Echo, this is the Utopia Tape Echo Delay.

Mix (wet and dry signals), Repeat (number of echoes) and Delay (delay time) are the knobs present on the Utopia. There’s one lone toggle switch, too, which turns on and off the Modulation mode, great for getting those vintage analog echo tones. Although it looks pretty simple, the Utopia offers a few surprises under the hood as well, for more in-depth control of the overall sound it produces.

The internal controls are Tone (brighten or darken the repeats), Rate (sets the speed of the modulation), Depth (how present the modulation is on the delayed signal) and More (switch from 400ms to 600 ms maximum delay times) really open this pedal up. You are able to easily set the delay to sound exactly how you want it to, pushing the envelope and the boundaries of what’s possible with such a deceptively simple-looking effect. Working all of these internal controls with the external ones leads to a broad spectrum of sounds, ones that you will have a blast taking your time discovering.

Offering a warm and vintage tone, the Utopia Tape Echo is primarily designed to be used as a slap-back delay, calibrated for echoes from 0 to 400ms (the circuit offers up to 600ms), but with the slightly longer delay max, can be used for excellent lead tones and solos as well. With the echo section followed by the modulation, with variable speed and depth, there are multitudes of sonic options waiting to be discovered here. The folks at Anasounds are really creating some excellent effects, and this one is just the tip of the iceberg. Check out our reviews of their other pedals, and head over to their website to see all of the pedals they have to offer!