BRITISH MAKER ORIGIN Effects ascended quickly into the upper echelon of high-end boutique pedal makers largely with its Cali76 compressor, based on the legendary Urei 1176 studio rack compressor. They’re back at it with the new M-EQ Driver, which channels another classic processor, the vaunted Pultec passive EQ made famous in the 1950s for its ability to sweeten and boost, in particular, a signal’s midrange.
Rather than tap the Pultec circuit purely for its frequency-adjusting capabilities, Origin takes advantage of the original circuit’s ability to drive a signal into sweet, harmonically saturated distortion.