RatingsPros:Superb tones. Superb construction. Superb range. Superb everything. Cons: Superb ain’t cheap. Street: $649 ($748 as reviewed with optional footswitch)
origineffects.com
| Tones:  Ease of Use:  Build/Design: Value:  |
Origin Effects bills their RevivalDRIVE as an overdrive, but that description sells the pedal short. It’s more like “several amps in a 6" x 5" x 2" enclosure.” Yes, superb overdrive is a star feature, but not the only one.
In general terms, the RevivalDRIVE is an all-analog “amp in a box” pedal, similar in concept to all those stompboxes that aspire to make your amp sound like some other amp. Like those plexi/tweed/Vox impersonators, it replicates amp circuitry in miniature, using small-format components, with transistors standing in for tubes. But RevivalDRIVE takes that idea to new heights.
Built Like a…?
I don’t use the phrase “built like a tank” in reviews, and not just because it’s a cliché. Most stompboxes are housed in similar enclosures outfitted with similar hardware. I’m no armaments expert, but I don’t think tanks are made from such slender sheets of metal.
But RevivalDRIVE is built like a damn tank. It lives in an extra-heavy folded-steel enclosure. Its knobs, pots, footswitches, mini-switches, and trimpots are as sturdy as they come. The pedal weighs a frickin’ ton. (Actually, it’s a bit less than three pounds, which feels like a ton in stompbox terms.) I have never encountered a more formidably built guitar pedal. Yes, this is an unusually expensive stompbox, but you get a serious piece of hardware for your money.
Rectified Situation
Despite being literally made of heavy metal, the tones here are inspired by amps from the 1950s through early ’70s. The RevivalDRIVE houses two discreet simulated amp circuits: one with a relatively spongy tube-rectifier-like response and one with a tighter solid-state sound. A footswitch toggles between sides. A DIP switch lets you assign solid-state voicing to both sides.
I don’t use the word “simulated” in the amp modeler sense. This strictly analog device doesn’t sound like a miked amp when you record it direct until you add speaker modeling. But it faithfully duplicates the behavior of a vintage amp’s electronics.
Origin Effects calls the pedal a “ghosting overdrive,” in reference to the combination tones (or difference tones) generated by interactions between an amp’s power supply and the notes you play. (That’s why you sometimes hear a low tone while playing high-register guitar notes. And why, when you bend a note, the two pitches move in the opposite direction.) It’s a harmonically complex “design flaw” that many players love, and which most modeling devices fail to duplicate. Here, though, it’s perfectly realistic. There’s even a control to set the strength of the effect.
Aping Amps
Other knobs control such amp-design variables as the amount of negative feedback, the pitch and intensity of bright switches, the preamp color, and the EQ spectra. The RevivalDRIVE doesn’t mimic any particular amp in the modeling sense, but it can behave like any number of vintage amps: especially tweed Fenders, early Voxes, and pre-master-volume Marshalls.
For the demo clips, I plugged the RevivalDRIVE straight into my DAW via a clean preamp. For Clip 1, I routed the signal through a Reamp into a clean-toned Marshall “Bluesbreaker” clone miked with a Royer R-121. The amp’s setting never changes, nor does the guitar. For Clip 2, I used speaker emulators, compression, and reverb within my DAW. (I didn’t try to mimic the tones of Clip 1, so the results sound very different.) Clip 3 is the raw sound of the RevivalDRIVE recorded direct, without any downstream processing, included just so you can hear exactly what the pedal contributes.
I played some clean-toned excerpts because, as with a real amp, you don’t need high gain to make good use of the amp’s tone shaping controls. The RevivalDRIVE is equally adept at bone-crunch distortion, sweet overdrive, and subtle, brink-of-distortion warmth. Even if you have no desire to imitate amps, the RevivalDRIVE lets you fine-tune amp-pushing overdrive in excruciating detail.
Lots to Learn
Chances are, most users can simply connect the RevivalDRIVE to an amp, tweak the large tone and gain controls, and summon killer tones. But as you might expect from a pedal with 18 knobs and 15 switches, absorbing everything demands study. (In addition to the forest of front-panel knobs, there are additional voicing/tone controls on two sides.) It’s telling that the pedal’s excellent manual begins with pages of discussion about the inner workings of tube amps. Understanding those concepts is the fastest way to understand the RevivalDRIVE.
Connecting the optional $99 footswitch adds additional wrinkles. It only has two switches, but they do nice stuff. One toggles the midrange settings on and off, which is perfect for adding extra oomph to solos. The other bypasses the dry/wet mix control. You might, for example, assign a mostly dry mix to a channel, and then click to 100 percent pedal for a heavier sound. Between the pedal’s two channels and these two switches, you can have as many as eight tones on tap.
The Verdict
Until now, Origin Effects was best known for cramming the Urei 1176 circuit into small stompboxes, yielding some of the finest pedalboard compressors ever. With its phenomenal build quality and realistic amp response, the RevivalDRIVE is even more impressive. It provides a vast array of vintage tones (and not just high-gain ones) when played through an amp, or recorded direct with the assistance of downstream effects. I gave it a high value rating despite the formidable price, because the construction, sound quality, and general utility are even more formidable. The RevivalDRIVE is the sort of stompbox that regular pedals dream about being when they grow up.
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This month’s mod Dan’s uses a 500k linear pot, a 1.5H inductor (L) with a 0.039 µF (39nF) cap (C), and a 220k resistor (R) in parallel.
Don’t let the name fool you, this is a purely passive device—nothing is going to be boosted. In general, you can’t increase anything with passive electronics that isn’t already there. Period. But you can reshape the tone by deemphasizing certain frequencies and making others more prominent (so … “boost” in guitar marketing language). Removing highs makes lows more apparent, and vice versa. In addition, the use of inductors (which create the magnetic field in a guitar circuit) and capacitors will create resonant peaks and valleys (bandpasses and notches), further coloring the overall tone. This type of bandpass filter only allows certain frequencies to pass through, while others are blocked, and it all works at unity gain.
“You can’t increase anything with passive electronics that isn’t already there … but you can reshape the tone by deemphasizing certain frequencies and making others more prominent.”
All the systems I mentioned above are doing more or less the same thing, using different approaches and slightly different component values. They are all meant to be updated tone controls. Our common tone circuit is usually a variable low-pass filter (aka treble-cut filter), which only allows the low frequencies to pass through, while the high frequencies get sent to ground via the tone cap. Most of these systems are LCR networks, which means that there is not only a capacitor (C), like on our standard tone controls, but also an inductor (L) and a resistor (R).
In general, all these systems are meant to control the midrange in order to scoop the mids, creating a mid-cut. This can be a cool sounding option, e.g. on a Strat for that mid-scooped neck and middle tone.
Dan Torres offered his “midrange kit” via an internet shop that is no longer online, same with his business website. The Torres design is a typical LCR network and looks like the illustration at the top of this column.
Dan’s design uses a 500k linear pot, a 1.5H inductor (L) with a 0.039 µF (39nF) cap (C), and a 220k resistor (R) in parallel. Let’s break down the parts piece by piece:
Any 500k linear pot will do the trick, in one of the rare scenarios where a linear pot works better in a passive guitar system than an audio pot.
(C) 0.039µF cap: This is kind of an odd value. Keeping production tolerances of up to 20 percent in mind, any value that is close will do, so you can use any small cap you want for this. I would prefer a small metallized film cap, and any voltage rating will do. If you want to stay as close as possible to the original design, use any 0.039 µF low-tolerance film cap.
(L) 1.5H inductor: The original design uses a Xicon 42TL021 inductor, which is easy to find and fairly priced. This one is also used in the Bill Lawrence Q-Filter design, the Gibson standard Varitone, and many other systems like this. It’s very small, so it will fit in virtually every electronic compartment of a guitar. It has a frequency range of 300 Hz up to 3.4 kHz, with a primary impedance of 4k ohms (that’s the one we want to use) and a secondary impedance of 600 ohms. Snip off the three secondary leads and the center tap of the primary side and use the two remaining outer primary leads; the primary side is marked with a “P.” On the pic, you can see the two leads you need marked in red, all other leads can be snipped off. You can connect the two remaining leads to the pot either way; it doesn’t matter which of them is going to ground when using it this way.
Drawing courtesy of singlecoil.com
(R) 220k: use a small axial metal film resistor (0.25 W), which is easy to find and is the quasi-standard.
Other designs use slightly different part values—the Bill Lawrence Q-filter has a 1.8H L, 0.02 µF C and 8k R, while the old RA Gresco Tone Qube from the ’80s has a 1.5H L, 0.0033 µF C, and a 180k R, so this is a wide field for experimentation to tweak it for your personal tone.
This mid-cut system can be put into any electric guitar not only as a master tone, but also together with a regular tone control or something like the Fender Greasebucket, or it can be assigned only to a certain pickup. It can be a great way to enhance your sonic palette, so give it a try.
That’s it! Next month, we’ll take a deeper look into how to fight feedback on a Telecaster. It’s a common issue, so stay tuned!
Until then ... keep on modding!