Origin Effects Deluxe 55

This obviously is an oddball and I do admit that this pedal came into my possession with the sole intent of passing it on to a guitar player, but it’s here, so let’s check it out!
I don’t know too much about legendary guitar amps, but apparently this is the amp-in-a-box version of the Fender Tweed Deluxe. I don’t know anything about that amp and old Fender amps look all the same to my untrained eye. The enclosure and control layout look like the DCX Bass. The whole pedal looks and feels like an Origin pedal. It’s so high quality it’s almost boring. Bent steel enclosure, luxurious knobs … it’s all top shelf stuff and you instantly get washed over with a feeling of holding a super high quality piece of audio equipment when you take it out of the box.

Four knobs, two switches. Did those old Fenders have gain and master volume? The Deluxe 55 does.
We get a simple three knob layout with Drive, Level and Tone. Furthermore, if the Origin Website tells the truth, it was somewhat of a common practice to roll the tubes in the preamp of the old Fender. It came equipped with 12AY7, which players swapped for 12AX7 – in my experience those generally offer a bit more gain and a have a brighter grit when driven while the 12AY7 are a bit more mellow and have less grit. The Deluxe 55 offers tube rolling with the flick of a switch – the left position is the original 12AY7, the right position does the swap to 12AX7.
There is one more switch and one more knob, and this is a bit of a party trick. The DCX Bass already offered something special, giving the player the option to roll off top end depending on the amount of distortion coming from the pedal. In this here case, they tried to take care of the classic problem you run into when you stack preamps: The EQ curves of the preamps stack as well. So when you use a device with a classic Fender tone stack that has bass and treble as boost only and mids as cut only, you’ll end up with a scooped signal. Now run a Fender-Amp-In-A-Box pedal into that amp and you’ll have way too much of a scoop. The second switch has three positions. The flat setting does nothing, as does the Post-EQ knob when the switch is in that position. The other two settings are meant for Fender and Marshall style amps. My guess is that the Deluxe 55 will counter the baked in tone curve of Fender or Marshall’esque amps and give you the option of using the pedal and amp combination as a two channel system instead of having to balance EQs and having to compromise on both ends.

Well, the only thing that interests me is how well it does on bass. The manual claims that the Tone knob controls the amount of treble and also boosts gain when set past 2 o’clock.
Of course I did measure what it does.
Drive and Level at noon, the Post EQ section set to flat:

These are my measurements with the switch in 12AY7 and 12AX7 positions. It seems like there is a little more going on than just treble control. The noon setting looks pretty flat in both accounts, but along with the reduced treble in the minimum setting, there’s also a bass boost going on.

The main thing, of course, is that the measurements indicate no baked in bass cut.
Strong and steady, down to 20Hz.
On paper, the Deluxe 55 is absolutely capable to be used with the electric bass guitar.

On paper, that is.
When I plug it into my playing setup and start hitting notes, I get
the sound you’d actually expect when you go ahead and craft a rich and deep modern bass sound and then plug it into a vintage guitar amp. The sound of a speaker farting out, driven by a power amp that’s not comfortable with these frequencies. It’s very dynamic and has the amp-like push back when you push forward, quickly clearing up on note decay. When I keep to playing with a soft touch, have the gain around 9 o’clock and the tone just a bit past noon, the pedal sounds actually pretty decent – but there’s only the tiniest amount of dirt. I need to put on headphones to make it out. Once I increase either gain or hit the notes harder, the “speaker farts out”. I actually checked my signal chain thrice to make sure there’s no other device that gets clipped, but all is fine. The level is carefully balanced to unity, and with the Deluxe 55 off, I get a crisp and clean signal. Switching on the Deluxe 55 yet again reveals the sound of a speaker farting out. This is not really getting me anywhere I’d like to go, so I switch tack. Some experimenting later, I follow strict logic. Origin probably anticipated that people will play an electric guitar into the pedal and send it to a tube driven guitar amp.
On the side of the input jack, I cannot help it. It’s gonna be a bass wearing flats, not a guitar. However, on the output jack … I can offer my trusty old Meatsmoke. That is, after all, more or less the front end of a tube amp, and it’s not even meant as a bass preamp, people also use it for guitar.
With that setup, I can get tones that do please the ear somewhat. There’s a feeling of heavy compression, not unlike a tube power amp that gets pushed hard. With the Meatsmoke already having some dirt by itself, the Deluxe 55 stacks up nicely and is fun to play.

I did toy around with the two Post EQ settings for a bit, with the switch to the left the signal gets much darker and gains a fair bit of low end. With the switch to the right, the mids drop out a bit. The Post EQ knob sets the amount of that effect – but with no compatible amp and amp settings it feels like it’s best left alone.

All in all, I would not recommend that pedal to a bassist, unless you’re searching for that broken sound of an amp farting out. I’m glad I kept my expectations on the low side, because this was not a hidden gem waiting to be discovered. This is a pedal that’s obviously not meant for bass.

This is playing my six string with the gain set rather low and the tone just past noon:

And this is playing my 4 string Fakenbacker into the Deluxe 55, followed by the Meatsmoke.