Origin Effects

This issue, we venture to the leafy outreaches of Buckinghamshire to discover more about an effects manufacturer whose pedals are turning up on the ’boards of top players all around the world

- David Mead

When guitarists as diverse as Joe Walsh, Josh Smith, Ed O’Brien, and David Gilmour start clearing space on their pedalboards for the effects output of a particular company, it’s time to sit up and take notice. Such is the case with Origin Effects. Its compressors – the Cali76 and SlideRIG – and the RevivalDRIVE have quite literally been getting under the feet of a whole host of players, the common denominator between them being superlative tone. So, what exactly is the lure? We thought the best way to find out was to pay the company a visit and talk to its designer-in-chief, Simon Keats.

Simon began his fascination with effects pedals in his teens, the intention being to attend music college and turn professional.

“I decided I was probably never going to get a job being a session player or whatever,” he tells us as we’d settled in a room lined with some jaw-droppingly awesome vintage amps and guitars. “So I ended up doing a degree in electronics.”

After leaving university, Simon began working in Vox’s R&D department, where he designed some of the Cooltron effects range and assisted with the company’s Brian May signature AC30. He went on to work for companies such as Nokia and Audio-Technica as an analog designer before deciding it was time to strike out on his own. As a fan of slide guitar – and Little Feat legend Lowell George, in particular – a plan began to form while he was maintaining some 1176 studio compressors.

“I’d read about how Lowell George, in the studio, chained two 1176s together,” he says. “I had two. I had my Strat and put the right strings on it – flat-wounds – and got the same slide that he used and I chained them together. I was just blown away by how good it sounded.