Origin Effects Bassrig ’64 Black Panel

The Origin Effects Bassrig 64 Black Panel is labeled and sold as an Amp-In-A-Box pedal, a recreation of a vintage Fender amp, so much is true. It also says “Preamp” right on the box. But it comes with one feature that had me itching for it.

When I first read up about that thing, I was under the impression that the so called “Amp out EQ” section featured a LPF and HPF. While that sounded interesting, I also learned that the XLR out has a baked in speaker sim that cannot be switched off at all, and that the Amp out EQ only affects the 1/4″ output.
This did not make too much sense for me in my particular situation and I did not buy one instantly.

However …

When a fellow bassist I have regular contact with received his Bassrig and started experimenting with it, he told me this is not a simple HPF and LPF. It is capable of boosting or cutting the higher and lower frequencies. The idea is to match your backline amp to your tonal preferences without messing with the FOH sound.
That’s what the good people at Origin intended.

The way I see it, you get a Fender tone stack in the proper position before the drive, but then you get another two band EQ after the drive. On top of that, you get a treble rolloff that starts either at 2k or 4k (which is meant to combat a cab with tweeter), so you might even be able to trim something off the top while boosting at the same time.

Used as a mere dirt box, this thing is insanely complex.
Diming every single knob, you can play around with the switch positions and get many flavors of fuzzy or wooly synthy sounds, some of which sound downright useful.

The tone stack seems to shift in certain knob positions – with the right switch in the ‘Fat’ position, it feels like the EQ is behaving differently.

The Tweed / Black option gets you a different response from the drive knob. The upper position feels like there’s more gain and more drive, also feels like there is more upper mids and treble content in the distortion, the lower position feels like there’s more push back and with the gain set right, the amp fights you to stay clean as you push it over the edge, which feels nice.
The tone stack itself feels kind of like your typical Fender. With bass and treble at zero, the mids knob becomes a volume control. However, I feel like there is some cut on tap for bass and treble. My ears tell me the closest thing to flat you get is when you have the mids maxed and bass and treble at around 9 o’clock. Something like 3-10-3 instead of 0-10-0. Could of course also be my signal chain doing that (or my ears).
However, the nature of the drive you get seems to be the opposite of what a tube screamer does. Instead of pushing everything towards the mids and distorting the result, it feels more like it gets spread out and the distortion starts at the outer edges, both high and low.

This pedal excels at what I want to call “White collar dirt”. There is a certain cultivated elegance to the drive sound that lacks balls, but in a good way.
Imagine a Jazz musician, black suit and white shirt. Slightly drunk, top button undone and neck tie loosened. The later part of the night is in full swing and the band is going all out. This is what the Bassrig sounds like when you set it (slightly) dirty. You don’t really get a sound that sits well in dirty rock or metal sounds, but something that works exceptionally well in a blues trio.

My only gripe with this pedal is the speaker sim that is married to the XLR out and cannot be switched off. It emulates the sound of a vintage 215 Fender cabinet. I’ve never played one of those, so I cannot say how exact it gets that tone, but to my ears it feels like someone draped a wet blanket over the sound. It is muffled, and not in a good way. I tried hard, but I could not get the XLR output to emit a signal that sounds and feels pleasant to my ears. Much of what the amp sim is capable of feels like it gets ruined by that. The treble response is bright and pearly, but none of that makes it through the cab sim. I’ve read online that I’m not alone in that verdict – and I would have hoped for an option to switch that thing off, because it would have made the whole thing a lot more useful.