NPD -Origin Effects Revival Drive Custom

lukedlb

I’m still reeling from my afternoon with the Revival Drive. 
Two aspects have to be understood: the sound we have in our mind is not necessarily the one we hear on the record; and tuning the RD to the amplifier is paramount.
My first play with the RD was uncertain: it seemed a lot fizzier than I cared for. Past attempts at overdrive had been abandoned in favour of light transparent breakup achieved by pushing my amp with a little boost or with extra volume from a compressor. In more cases than not, I returned to a fuzz with the guitar volume down. Thing is, as much as I tried, I could never get the complete guitar tone that I heard on Hendrix. I studied his playing, I could pull off the TAB, but I knew the sound was wrong. I even tried different string gauges in an effort to match the same tone to all the strings. Having failed, I played the Hendrix Clean tracks and the Hendrix Fuzz tracks. As much as I tried, the Hendrix overdriven remained alusive. 
The problem was down to volume level. My amps have no master volume. At the first notch on the volume, the amps are loud. Any higher and the room starts to shake. The amps sounded great in any case: a full bodied clean, punchy, delicate and full frequency. Fuzz more often than not remained on 8 volume on the guitar; at 10, the amps ran as if the volume had been turned way up: fun for a few seconds but ultimately damaging to the ear drums. This jump in volume using a fuzz didn’t make sense to me. However, I remember a mate explaining that when an amp is running on high volume, the fuzz doesn’t have the same impact, the high volume levels out the overall volume no matter what is thrown at the amp. Saturation and compression help to maintain that level. Unable to ever experiment at that volume at home, I would give up, turn my attention to another aspect of guitar playing, only to come back to the overdrive issue again and start from zero once more.
Attenuation never really appealed to me. I heard it once and didn’t like the loss of signal. I needed my amp to be working hard without the volume.
Then I addressed the elephant in the room: I don’t actually have a Marshall. The thing is, I’ve heard Marshall Plexis and the rest; my amps sound as good as they do clean. Yes, there are those extra mids that are the bone marrow in the marshall sound. So I bought a jtm45 pedal made with vintage parts to get that Marshall sound. It was throaty and created a whole new type of clean for me. I ultimately dismissed it as it was just too noisy.
I needed a true Marshall pedal that would take a fuzz without compressing. I needed a way to play a dimed amp at bedroom level. The RD promised the solution. Moreover, it might even provide the third wing in my tweed/blackface amp sound on my Redplate.
As I said earlier, my first play left me questioning. So I went back to the blackboard, so to speak: I listened to the original recordings again of Hendrix. Once the drums and bass were dropped, the guitar tone wasn’t as full frequency as I had remembered. In fact, it was fizzier or fuzzier at times, lacking in bass in others. this is where the LOWS on the RD helped. Alone, an extra bit of bass helps make the guitar solid; with accompaniment, a little less bass helped place the guitar perfectly.

Returning to the pedal again the next day, I read the manual again and took more time in tuning the re-amp EQ. I did this by lowering the gain (volume) and tuning the custom eq to have the same sound as the dry signal. Once I was happy that they were as close as I could get, I increased the gain/volume and lowered the output level. I had planned to use the flat pre amp. Instead, with the pedal tuned, the GB pre amp sounded great. I didn’t use the bright cap today. I increased the volume and adjusted the output accordingly so that the guitar’s volume set to 7/8 sounded good. Too little of the RD volume and output reduced the span of the volume control and made it dull. Once I had a great tone with the guitar volume set to 8, I could increase the guitar volume and achieve all the drive I could ever want. At 8, the guitar wasn’t amp-like clean. It was closer to being the cleanest a driven marshall could sound. I’m sure the blend pot can increase the clean sweep when I try it next week and achieve the transparent drive so in vogue. The pedal was begining to make sense. It isn’t an always on pedal. It remains an overdrive pedal that provides access to the tools that vintage musicians used: the volume pot on the guitar. This can not be understated. Volume pot control comes easily with a fuzz face yet with OD pedals the lower guitar volume just became dull. I wondered if I had to do the treble bleed solution. It turns out that diming the amp was once again the solution, a job provided by the RD internally.

I then hooked up a fuzz face into a univibe into the RD and played along to Jimi at Woodstock. The phrasing in villanova junction came much more from the delicacy in Jimi’s hands afforded by a dimed amp with a fuzz running from a low guitar volume. I tried jimi at Monterey without the Univibe and went from Killing floor to Rolling Stone with pickup choices, and attack and delicacy and volume control. What I had been failing to do for years at home finally made sense. The good news is that those years hadn’t been wasted as they gave me the chops to knock out those songs into equipment that would faithfully replicate the recordings.

For the time being I will concentrate on achieving my Hendrix concert sounds. In the future I hope to experiment with the RD to see what other sounds it can produce. I have a feeling this is just the beginning for this pedal. I’ll try to explain the pedal in a more complete fashion as I learn to use it. Unfortunately, time is never on my side so please have some patience for any updates.

lukedlb

It is a lot of scratch inside one pedal Should the pedal have problems in the future or if Origin closes, I don't feel as confident in an easy repair considering the tech inside. I'm probably over-worrying about potential problems down the line though I don't expect people worry about similar repairs for a blues breaker or a guv'vor. Can't fix it, buy another. 
The major problem with the RD is it really takes getting your head round. Once the hard work has been done, it'll be a set and leave situation. However, the re-amp eq still baffles me. Do I set it without more/presence, without gain (as I did), without ghost, without lows, without blend (and then adjust them accordingly to taste)? Once I've set the main controls, do I return to the eq to fine tune it or is that the job of the shelf, freq cut?
While the 20+page manual is indeed interesting and informative, I can't help but think it's an introduction. Whether this is due to Simon Keats believing that the set-up and interaction is obvious or the public's inability to apply his instruction, I can't say. I do believe that many people like me hoped for further insight by musician's posting their thoughts and settings. So far TGP has yet to provide any proper discussion even though it has a page dedicated to settings. All the RD players on FB have either sold or returned theirs. I believe this has more to do with the price than the complexity.
Many have suggested that a single channel version would be better, cheaper, smaller. I disagree. The options offered by the tweed/silicon and silicon/silicon with the further mid boost and blend cancel make for a 4 in 1 pedal, hell, 5 or 6 in 1 if you consider the other possible driven tones. Furthermore, it's application for DI or power-amp. A stripped down version of the pedal misses the point; it isn't simply an overdrive pedal. As Keats states, it follows the architecture of an amp; do overdrive pedals do the same? Is that what a TS9, a KOT or a fuzz do to obtain drive and distortion? Seeing as the RD follows the stages of amp architecture, I fear a stripped down version would be the same hardware without the control pots. Anyway, I assume that there is a lot of circuitry under the hood. The new Origin compressors were a reduced version of the original pedals. As the RD employs the same approach, I doubt that further miniaturisation is possible.

Keefy

lukedlb said:

...

1. While the 20+page manual is indeed interesting and informative, I can't help but think it's an introduction
...

2. So far TGP has yet to provide any proper discussion even though it has a page dedicated to settings

...

3. All the RD players on FB have either sold or returned theirs

...

4. Many have suggested that a single channel version would be better, cheaper, smaller. I disagree

...

1. You're right about the manual, it's just a starting point. There are so many variables available that it demands that the user take time to explore them.

2. I'll have a look at that. I have started to save some favourite settings, but tbh the RD is so easy to tweak, there's no massive need - plus any set of settings will be related to whatever the RD is plugged into.

3. I've still got mine (whether FB stands for FretBoard or FaceBook), just used it today for some recording. No plans to sell it!

4. I was one of those who asked about the single-channel version, but two channels plus switchable mid boost and clean blend make the RD very flexible indeed.

lukedlb

As expected I have had no time since to play with the RD. Tomorrow, hopefully.
@Keefy, perhaps you can describe how you set up the pedal? The EQ2 presents some challenges in combination with the bright cut, high shelf, Low. I can't help but think that they work towards the overall tone, especially on the regular version of the pedal. I assume that EQ2 can imitate EQ1 (the settings for a Black face style amp); I wonder what would be the settings for the Marshall voicing on the regular pedal.
As mentioned before, I set up the EQ2 with the cleanest gain possible. As gain was added, Low, bright and Hi-shelf were moderated accordingly. I assume this is the way to go.
However, when it came time to tune to a second amp (the first amp being a superlead/hiwatt type amp), I was astonished to discover that EQ1 was the best tuning. The amp is an old 60s kelly amp, which i had always assumed followed the voice of a marshall. The settings were so different that I found EQ! to be the best solution.It threw me so much that I abandoned using that amp and returned to the superlead.
Regarding point 3, I try to ignore the fact that FB reads as Facebook. If we persist to acknowledge FB as Fretboard, perhaps we can leave a dent in that megamonster of a website, leaving Fretboard to hog up all our online time.
Regarding settings, I was actually more interested in tuning the RD to different amps; try this EQ2 setting with a hotrod deluxe, with a blues junior, with an AC30, bandmaster, etc...
The EQ2 actually revealed my second amp to be quite different to my first amp when I always thought they had both good tone, perhaps one being more direct than the other. What do those large difference in settings indicate?

Keefy

@lukedlb, first of all I have the regular version of the pedal. I bought it almost exclusively for home recording, so I deemed the Custom's EQ panel to be an unnecessary extra. I did try the pedal through a Fender-derived amp, for which EQ1 worked best. Other than that, I have used it in the PWR AMP setting.

Yes, the HI SHELF and BRI CAP CUT controls are an important part of matching the pedal for the best sound. Although the tips in the manual will get you some way there, when it comes down to it you have to use your ears (as you obviously did) - if it sounds right, it is right. The US BRIGHT-CAP modes introduce huge amounts of extra top end at low gain (VOLUME) settings, and I have no problem with switching to the O position if it sounds better. So don't worry that you ended up with different settings on your two amps.

Having got over the RD's initial steep learning curve (as well as that of the Two Notes Torpedo C.A.B. that I bought to use with it), I now find I can dial up usable sounds much more quickly than with other 'amp sim' boxes I have used in the past. Here's a clip I just finished. Both guitars used the VALVE RECTIFIER side. The rhythm guitar (Telecaster Deluxe, both pickups) went through a recreation of a wound-up tweed-style amp. For the lead guitar (Les Paul) I backed off the lows massively and switched in the mid boost to even out the volume between low and high notes, then backed off the blend to add some clean guitar back in and give the sound a more solid 'core'.

Man! I Feel Like A Woman! - guitar solo