hi ! i’m alexandre ernandez, co-founder of anasounds
here is my tone story !
2004
12 years old, my father bought me my first guitar, an Aria Pro II Stratocaster style.
I jumped into the guitar world, listening to various bands like ACDC, Nirvana, Guns n Roses, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath….
These made me want to be a guitar hero.
Also my father is guitarist, my brother is pianist… So at home we have, like 2 violins, 5 guitars, 2 keyboards, 1 banjo… It was not unfamiliar to me.
=> Guitar is a virus.
2005
I had some guitar lessons, where I learned a lot of covers. I also made a cover band with friends of mine.
To make the band possible, My first amp came in!
I found it from a friend of dad, a Marshall Valvestate 40 that was collecting dust in his cellar.
The sound was great for a start but the preamp never worked! To solve this,
I bought this crappy but useful Zoom G2.1u and plugged it directly into the power amp. It was fine for a start.
=> Old stuff is still good enough. Don’t throw it away.
I had an internship for a week, then i chose to work for Gatti musique, a little store in Nice which was nice to accept me for this job so fast.
There, I had the chance to try a lot of guitars, amps and pedals. And to finally buy a Metal Zone that I returned only 2 days later. (true story)
=> Never stay at a store more than a day, you’ll finally buy something, even if you are the seller! (even if it’s crap)
2006
I worked a whole summer with dad (who was a plumber) to finally be able to buy some new gear, the Boss GT-8. Holy crap!
I was so happy to have all these features, the store (where I worked) taught me so many wonderful tricks you can do with it.
I created all the presets you can imagine, with our cover band, we were able to play any style we wished!
But for the 21st of june festival, my first gig, I had to plug all my stuff into a JCM800, through the preamp.
Because I was used to playing with my crappy valvestate, I was sure that the sound could only be better with that amp and my rig. False!
Worst experience ever, the sound lost all its dynamics, gain was too prominent, tone was focused on mids. Well… Poor gig but still a lot of fun!
=> Digital devices are good for home or for stage with dedicated systems.
2006
The Aria was made with poor pickups and electronics. At 14, I did tons of research, spent hours on forums and decided to change every component inside the pickguard.
My first guitar (that I still have and use!) received some upgrades; new pickups, integrated clean boost, kill switch, pickup split switch, tone control….
This enlightened me to the fact that I love electronics because it’s concrete and it was very mysterious at that time.
At this moment, I knew what I wanted to study.
=> Full of stars in their eyes!
2007
High school, new band, girls… I had chosen a specific high school where they had the electronics option for my graduate.
Plus, the electronic teacher was the step father of one of my best friends. Nice opportunity to learn stuff!
I brought him a schematic of the Fuzz Factory and asked him if he could train me and help me understand how the components interact.
=> You mostly learn shit at school but sometimes there is cool stuff.
2008
I tried my first prototype Fuzz Factory, it worked but it was not stable, lots of short-circuits and weird biasing.
I had to focus on girls and exams. At that time I started playing less and less guitar.
=> Never forget what is important in life (Really?)
2010
I’m accepted at the Polytechnique university of Nice. Only one goal, work on electronics.
We had to learn a lot of stuff for the first 2 years and competition was intense. No time for a band.
=> Work hard, play hard.
2012
I’m accepted to the electronic department and the previous years were successful. I’d realized that engineering school was finally not so hard to manage.
I listened to the courses and I tried to not be so stupid, that’s enough to learn some interesting stuff and go to the next classroom.
So i had to find a hobby, I decided to move my guitar, my GT-8 and my amp into my small university room and to set up a new band.
=> New chapter starting here.
2013
Band was created (covers of pop-rock/hard-rock). I remembered my experience with the GT-8,
so I decided that I needed to buy some pedals instead of playing on this sh*t.
Then, looking at the pricing of individual pedals, I understood that my student revenue wasn’t enough for a full pedalboard.
So, I looked back at the Fuzz Factory schematic and said “that’s easy, let’s make my own”. I bought a “small clone” PCB from a french artisan,
ordered a couple of components on Ebay and a couple of days later, I had a fantastic chorus for something like 80€!
The first one that I did myself! I realized that I didn’t save so much money because I bought some tools and lost a lot of time
but I realized how much fun it was to do it, how well it worked and I wanted to do it again.
=> When you are able, do it yourself!
2013
Doing clones and clones and clones, I had a dozens that I didn’t use! Clone frenzy! I decided to make some gifts for friends.
But when everybody had a gift and I realized that my bank account was in the deep dark red, I sold some of them on Ebay.
And my first clone of the Fuzz Factory sold out for less than 80€. Shit! People want to buy my ugly pedals!? There is something to do…
=> Everybody can create miracles.
2013
My first “electronic” internship was to be a waiter in a french riviera cafe. So much fun! After the dozens of clones i sold…
The team was unfair and I worked a lot for nothing. One day, I left the job while people were waiting for food.
I didn’t get paid, but I’d started to do something I esteem.
=> Entrepreneurship serves your life.
jump back to 2010
University was a lot of pressure, but at the same time I had some opportunities to meet wonderful people.
The very first days of university, I met Magali at the “student home” and it went fast! Today we have been together for almost 7 years!
Full of good and exciting moments.
=> Never miss your chance
2013
Magali saw me doing some DIY soldering on our small balcony, she laughed when she saw the raw aluminium enclosures with ink markings.
She asked me to give her a pedal so she could make some aesthetic improvements.
A month later, she came back with nearly the current anasounds design!
=> Women in da house!
2014
We were really involved in this guitar pedal project, we decided to create a company that we called Anasounds.
We created the logo, the website and, thought about the first products, the Feed Me, the Centaur and the Phase Lag.
But I was still at school and we didn’t get time to make a true business. But the first engineering started here, it was easy, certainly, but still.
Doing clones, people often asked me similar effects, I analyzed them and did what a lot of manufacturers do today, beautify the schematics of old circuits.
=> Anasounds was born!
2014
At the same time, at school we had the opportunity to take part in a startup challenge (the challenge jeunes pousses), with other students, we worked hard on it.
The project was a midi multi fx pedal designed for stage use. We won this challenge but the project never started.
=> The startup world is fun, give it a try.
2014
With a friend from the university, Marjorie Hesse, we wanted to study all the overdrives, she is bassist and she wanted to take her internship with me, great!
Studying all the overdrives, we found after hundreds of schematics, some similarities and differences.
We joined all these analyses and created the Cerberus!
=> First true engineering, starting from specifications and finally finding a solution. The Cerberus was our first true creation, an all in one overdrive.
2015
I found some time to work on 4 projects, instead of prototyping from clones like before, I wanted to design my own sound.
I took a PT2399 and created from scratch the Utopia. I reshaped all the tone of The Savage to get this MKII, more personal and authentic.
I found that the collection needed a booster and created the Freq Up including a Tube Screamer like overdrive and a fantastic and powerful clean EQ.
My jacks and true bypass needed a buffer, so the Bumper was born. This year was so fun!
I had few orders to handle, just time to focus on the new products.
At this time, the development method was to build up a lot of different schematics on proto boards, hear the difference with my own ears and gear,
plug and unplug a lot of wires, components, etc… When I finally found the sound I saved the schematic.
Then I visited guitarists whose ears I trust and we finished the fine tuning.
=> Experimental R&D was fun!
2015
Finally finishing my studies and starting to become an engineer. I chose in electronic engineering, the digital signal processing specialization,
it was the only one which went in depth on sound and signal.
For my end of studies internship, I worked for a year as trainee and contractor for NXP semiconductor in Sophia Antipolis.
I learned more about signal processing than in 5 years of studies!
There, my job was to play with voice detection and handle the lab measurements with any kind of signals.
That was hard and only focused on technic, to teach me the correct methods.
=> Learn before designing.
2015
Magali and I did another challenge, the one for the “Fondation Unice”, where we presented our business plan for Anasounds
and all the projects we plan to set up for the next 5 years. Convinced by the innovation behind and by the marketing side,
they decided to give us the first 10k€ to set up our company.
=> First time we have some money to do something, we only lost money for 2 years.
2016
At 24, we got the money, we got the time because I finished my internship and Magali finished her job in biotechnologies.
the “BPI France” gave us extra money because they trust our R&D project (that you still don’t know about)
And then, on the 1st january of 2016, the Anasounds company was officially registered & launched!
=> Here we go, problems start!
My guitarist needs were satisfied, I’d found my tone, our product range was complete enough for my gig.
But, I had a company now, I needed to do pedals that people will use! Everyone doesn’t have the same tastes as me!
I’d talked with Julien Bitoun a couple of times about his grail and we finally took the time to invent the Bitoun Fuzz.
=> First signature pedal from Anasounds!
2016
I got all the pedals I want, I still have my first guitar but also nice other ones, but my amp is still this horrific Valvestate!
I had to do something, buy a new amp? No! I bought a G5 kit on Tube Town and did my first tube amp!
=> I still use it, I’m not dead because of the 400V. But I have improvements to make!
2017
The Lazy Comp, compressor pedal that works in parallel paths! Heard about this method but had not seen it in a lot of pedals.
So I decided to design that for myself and other musicians. In this development, I took feedback from 10 musicians that had a pre-series of the Lazy Comp
and tried it out to make it interesting for all of them!
=> Open design?
2017
New projects begin ! Yann Cayrol joined me on the R&D team, at the same time, i’m totally free from distribution of the products because of new partnership with Filling Distribution (western Europe) and LPD music (USA).
Our new mission is to develop the FX Teacher pedals range! DIY pedals that are created from scratch by our team
And that will be in DIY form only. As I did 4 years ago!
=> DIY, open source, sure it is the future, but still you need a good teacher to achieve something near perfection (or at least operational)!
We’ve started to work on the digital processing and micro-controller for an optical tremolo which is still analog but with a lot of digital features and a reverb,
which is generated by a DSP! That was my study after all!
=> Sometimes, analog has its limits, but trust me, if I can do everything in analog, I’ll do it.
Through this story I hope that people had recognized themselves and that with all the projects
we launch, you’ll have the chance to engineer your own sound!
That was my tone quest, feel free to share your own story.
alex.
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hi !
i’m alexandre ernandez,
co-founder of anasounds
here is my tone story !
2004
12 years old, my father bought me my first guitar, an Aria Pro II Stratocaster style.
I jumped into the guitar world, listening to various bands like ACDC, Nirvana, Guns n Roses, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath….
These made me want to be a guitar hero.
Also my father is guitarist, my brother is pianist… So at home we have, like 2 violins, 5 guitars, 2 keyboards, 1 banjo… It was not unfamiliar to me.
=> Guitar is a virus.
2005
I had some guitar lessons, where I learned a lot of covers. I also made a cover band with friends of mine.
To make the band possible, My first amp came in!
I found it from a friend of dad, a Marshall Valvestate 40 that was collecting dust in his cellar.
The sound was great for a start but the preamp never worked! To solve this,
I bought this crappy but useful Zoom G2.1u and plugged it directly into the power amp. It was fine for a start.
=> Old stuff is still good enough. Don’t throw it away.
I had an internship for a week, then i chose to work for Gatti musique, a little store in Nice which was nice to accept me for this job so fast.
There, I had the chance to try a lot of guitars, amps and pedals. And to finally buy a Metal Zone that I returned only 2 days later. (true story)
=> Never stay at a store more than a day, you’ll finally buy something, even if you are the seller! (even if it’s crap)
2006
I worked a whole summer with dad (who was a plumber) to finally be able to buy some new gear, the Boss GT-8. Holy crap!
I was so happy to have all these features, the store (where I worked) taught me so many wonderful tricks you can do with it.
I created all the presets you can imagine, with our cover band, we were able to play any style we wished!
But for the 21st of june festival, my first gig, I had to plug all my stuff into a JCM800, through the preamp.
Because I was used to playing with my crappy valvestate, I was sure that the sound could only be better with that amp and my rig. False!
Worst experience ever, the sound lost all its dynamics, gain was too prominent, tone was focused on mids. Well… Poor gig but still a lot of fun!
=> Digital devices are good for home or for stage with dedicated systems.
2006
The Aria was made with poor pickups and electronics. At 14, I did tons of research, spent hours on forums and decided to change every component inside the pickguard.
My first guitar (that I still have and use!) received some upgrades; new pickups, integrated clean boost, kill switch, pickup split switch, tone control….
This enlightened me to the fact that I love electronics because it’s concrete and it was very mysterious at that time.
At this moment, I knew what I wanted to study.
=> Full of stars in their eyes!
2007
High school, new band, girls… I had chosen a specific high school where they had the electronics option for my graduate.
Plus, the electronic teacher was the step father of one of my best friends. Nice opportunity to learn stuff!
I brought him a schematic of the Fuzz Factory and asked him if he could train me and help me understand how the components interact.
=> You mostly learn shit at school but sometimes there is cool stuff.
2008
I tried my first prototype Fuzz Factory, it worked but it was not stable, lots of short-circuits and weird biasing.
I had to focus on girls and exams. At that time I started playing less and less guitar.
=> Never forget what is important in life (Really?)
2010
I’m accepted at the Polytechnique university of Nice. Only one goal, work on electronics.
We had to learn a lot of stuff for the first 2 years and competition was intense. No time for a band.
=> Work hard, play hard.
2012
I’m accepted to the electronic department and the previous years were successful. I’d realized that engineering school was finally not so hard to manage.
I listened to the courses and I tried to not be so stupid, that’s enough to learn some interesting stuff and go to the next classroom.
So i had to find a hobby, I decided to move my guitar, my GT-8 and my amp into my small university room and to set up a new band.
=> New chapter starting here.
2013
Band was created (covers of pop-rock/hard-rock). I remembered my experience with the GT-8,
so I decided that I needed to buy some pedals instead of playing on this sh*t.
Then, looking at the pricing of individual pedals, I understood that my student revenue wasn’t enough for a full pedalboard.
So, I looked back at the Fuzz Factory schematic and said “that’s easy, let’s make my own”. I bought a “small clone” PCB from a french artisan,
ordered a couple of components on Ebay and a couple of days later, I had a fantastic chorus for something like 80€!
The first one that I did myself! I realized that I didn’t save so much money because I bought some tools and lost a lot of time
but I realized how much fun it was to do it, how well it worked and I wanted to do it again.
=> When you are able, do it yourself!
2013
Doing clones and clones and clones, I had a dozens that I didn’t use! Clone frenzy! I decided to make some gifts for friends.
But when everybody had a gift and I realized that my bank account was in the deep dark red, I sold some of them on Ebay.
And my first clone of the Fuzz Factory sold out for less than 80€. Shit! People want to buy my ugly pedals!? There is something to do…
=> Everybody can create miracles.
2013
My first “electronic” internship was to be a waiter in a french riviera cafe. So much fun! After the dozens of clones i sold…
The team was unfair and I worked a lot for nothing. One day, I left the job while people were waiting for food.
I didn’t get paid, but I’d started to do something I esteem.
=> Entrepreneurship serves your life.
jump back to 2010
University was a lot of pressure, but at the same time I had some opportunities to meet wonderful people.
The very first days of university, I met Magali at the “student home” and it went fast! Today we have been together for almost 7 years!
Full of good and exciting moments.
=> Never miss your chance
2013
Magali saw me doing some DIY soldering on our small balcony, she laughed when she saw the raw aluminium enclosures with ink markings.
She asked me to give her a pedal so she could make some aesthetic improvements.
A month later, she came back with nearly the current anasounds design!
=> Women in da house!
2014
We were really involved in this guitar pedal project, we decided to create a company that we called Anasounds.
We created the logo, the website and, thought about the first products, the Feed Me, the Centaur and the Phase Lag.
But I was still at school and we didn’t get time to make a true business. But the first engineering started here, it was easy, certainly, but still.
Doing clones, people often asked me similar effects, I analyzed them and did what a lot of manufacturers do today, beautify the schematics of old circuits.
=> Anasounds was born!
2014
At the same time, at school we had the opportunity to take part in a startup challenge (the challenge jeunes pousses), with other students, we worked hard on it.
The project was a midi multi fx pedal designed for stage use. We won this challenge but the project never started.
=> The startup world is fun, give it a try.
2014
With a friend from the university, Marjorie Hesse, we wanted to study all the overdrives, she is bassist and she wanted to take her internship with me, great!
Studying all the overdrives, we found after hundreds of schematics, some similarities and differences.
We joined all these analyses and created the Cerberus!
=> First true engineering, starting from specifications and finally finding a solution. The Cerberus was our first true creation, an all in one overdrive.
2015
I found some time to work on 4 projects, instead of prototyping from clones like before, I wanted to design my own sound.
I took a PT2399 and created from scratch the Utopia. I reshaped all the tone of The Savage to get this MKII, more personal and authentic.
I found that the collection needed a booster and created the Freq Up including a Tube Screamer like overdrive and a fantastic and powerful clean EQ.
My jacks and true bypass needed a buffer, so the Bumper was born. This year was so fun!
I had few orders to handle, just time to focus on the new products.
At this time, the development method was to build up a lot of different schematics on proto boards, hear the difference with my own ears and gear,
plug and unplug a lot of wires, components, etc… When I finally found the sound I saved the schematic.
Then I visited guitarists whose ears I trust and we finished the fine tuning.
=> Experimental R&D was fun!
2015
Finally finishing my studies and starting to become an engineer. I chose in electronic engineering, the digital signal processing specialization,
it was the only one which went in depth on sound and signal.
For my end of studies internship, I worked for a year as trainee and contractor for NXP semiconductor in Sophia Antipolis.
I learned more about signal processing than in 5 years of studies!
There, my job was to play with voice detection and handle the lab measurements with any kind of signals.
That was hard and only focused on technic, to teach me the correct methods.
=> Learn before designing.
2015
Magali and I did another challenge, the one for the “Fondation Unice”, where we presented our business plan for Anasounds
and all the projects we plan to set up for the next 5 years. Convinced by the innovation behind and by the marketing side,
they decided to give us the first 10k€ to set up our company.
=> First time we have some money to do something, we only lost money for 2 years.
2016
At 24, we got the money, we got the time because I finished my internship and Magali finished her job in biotechnologies.
the “BPI France” gave us extra money because they trust our R&D project (that you still don’t know about)
And then, on the 1st january of 2016, the Anasounds company was officially registered & launched!
=> Here we go, problems start!
My guitarist needs were satisfied, I’d found my tone, our product range was complete enough for my gig.
But, I had a company now, I needed to do pedals that people will use! Everyone doesn’t have the same tastes as me!
I’d talked with Julien Bitoun a couple of times about his grail and we finally took the time to invent the Bitoun Fuzz.
=> First signature pedal from Anasounds!
2016
I got all the pedals I want, I still have my first guitar but also nice other ones, but my amp is still this horrific Valvestate!
I had to do something, buy a new amp? No! I bought a G5 kit on Tube Town and did my first tube amp!
=> I still use it, I’m not dead because of the 400V. But I have improvements to make!
2017
The Lazy Comp, compressor pedal that works in parallel paths! Heard about this method but had not seen it in a lot of pedals.
So I decided to design that for myself and other musicians. In this development, I took feedback from 10 musicians that had a pre-series of the Lazy Comp
and tried it out to make it interesting for all of them!
=> Open design?
2017
New projects begin ! Yann Cayrol joined me on the R&D team, at the same time, i’m totally free from distribution of the products because of new partnership with Filling Distribution (western Europe) and LPD music (USA).
Our new mission is to develop the FX Teacher pedals range! DIY pedals that are created from scratch by our team
And that will be in DIY form only. As I did 4 years ago!
=> DIY, open source, sure it is the future, but still you need a good teacher to achieve something near perfection (or at least operational)!
We’ve started to work on the digital processing and micro-controller for an optical tremolo which is still analog but with a lot of digital features and a reverb,
which is generated by a DSP! That was my study after all!
=> Sometimes, analog has its limits, but trust me, if I can do everything in analog, I’ll do it.
through this story i hope that people had recognized themselves and that with all the projects
we launch, you’ll have the chance to engineer your own sound !
that was my tone quest, feel free to share your own story.
alex.
EnregistrerEnregistrerEnregistrerEnregistrer
EnregistrerEnregistrer
