Modded my Origin 50!

J

jasonP

Well-known member
Hey guys,

With the help of Jason’s (headfirst) videos and the info posted on his website I was able to mod my Origin 50 into a ripper of an amp for less than $600. This thing has such a great feel as tone and I don’t think for the money it can be beat. I used some schematics and pictures online as well as my own amp. So it’s more of a Friedman JJ-100, JJ Jr. circuit, with added resonance and focus control. The pull boost feature engages the clipping and where the tilt knob is the focus NFB feedback control and removed the power scaling, so it’s in high voltage all the time, then in its place put a resonance pot.
What is surprising is how cutting and aggressive it is in the upper mids and top end and just has that perfect, in my opinion Marshall style modded type el-34 tone. Granted without the clippers in it’s basically just a BE with 3 gain stages, with just enough gain.
Check out the clip and see what you guys think of the tone.

 

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RaceU4her said:
nice!! my monomyth origin 50 totally rips, im honestly kind of surprised more guys arent modding these.
Click to expand...

It’s a pretty crazy mod to be honest, trying to implement it over the weird circuit Marshall has going on, and hard to impossible to find schematics of the amp. It took me over an hour of just staring at the schematic and thinking how the fuck am I going to do this lol. Then it’s all the removal of all the components that need to come out over the tube sockets it’s a pain in the ass. It’s alot of work.
Shea mods sound absolutely killer and his videos inspired me to mod my own. He and Jason are awesome! Really want to try both there amps.
 
jasonP said:
It’s a pretty crazy mod to be honest, trying to implement it over the weird circuit Marshall has going on, and hard to impossible to find schematics of the amp. It took me over an hour of just staring at the schematic and thinking how the fuck am I going to do this lol. Then it’s all the removal of all the components that need to come out over the tube sockets it’s a pain in the ass. It’s alot of work.
Shea mods sound absolutely killer and his videos inspired me to mod my own. He and Jason are awesome! Really want to try both there amps.
Click to expand...

yeah shea mentioned to me it took a lot of work and moving stuff around to do whatever he did, it was worth it though cause it now hangs with any amp i have.
 
…..and still Marshall doesn’t think to just do this themselves…lol. Where their (factory) heads at for high gain is just weird to me.
 
Not attempting to ask a rhetorical question here,
-Is that your straight cellphone recording
and which phone and is there a higher quality recording setting in the camera?
Beato mentioned something about this.
 
RaceU4her said:
yeah shea mentioned to me it took a lot of work and moving stuff around to do whatever he did, it was worth it though cause it now hangs with any amp i have.
Click to expand...
Agreed! I can tell you I’ve owned and played many amps and this amp hangs with the best of them.
 
Dino 939 said:
Not attempting to ask a rhetorical question here,
-Is that your straight cellphone recording
and which phone and is there a higher quality recording setting in the camera?
Beato mentioned something about this.
Click to expand...
YouTube does a great job of compressing the shit out of the video. I just used my iPhone. I could text it to you and probably be higher quality if your interested.
 
jasonP said:
Hey guys,

With the help of Jason’s (headfirst) videos and the info posted on his website I was able to mod my Origin 50 into a ripper of an amp for less than $600. This thing has such a great feel as tone and I don’t think for the money it can be beat. I used some schematics and pictures online as well as my own amp. So it’s more of a Friedman JJ-100, JJ Jr. circuit, with added resonance and focus control. The pull boost feature engages the clipping and where the tilt knob is the focus NFB feedback control and removed the power scaling, so it’s in high voltage all the time, then in its place put a resonance pot.
What is surprising is how cutting and aggressive it is in the upper mids and top end and just has that perfect, in my opinion Marshall style modded type el-34 tone. Granted without the clippers in it’s basically just a BE with 3 gain stages, with just enough gain.
Check out the clip and see what you guys think of the tone.

Click to expand...

Sounds great! I'm a little late to the game in regard to the original line. Picked up two for $400/ea! Unbelievably low. I actually seen one 2hr out for $325!!

There are a few different ways to go about modifying this thing....modify the existing boards, which can require some extensive modifications depending on what you do, gut rebuild up, or create a drop-in as Jason at Headfirst did!

I haven't done anything yet, but thinking, I'm going to take Jason and Alex's path and create a drop-in board as I'm looking for something specific with multiple channels and get rid of a bunch of crap like power scaling I don't want nor need.

I won't be releasing these boards for DIY, but will be a quick way to upgrade a unit if someone wants a more cost-effective solution from me, likewise, if I have a need for a quick built up system. 50-watts is a fair amount of power and the PT has separate taps for fixed bias as well as AUX for DC Heaters and relay switching!! How can you go wrong and for $400! The perfect modders platform.
 
I added a footswitchable metro effects loop to it as well. Fun little amp to mod and it sounds great. Even with moving the circuit around and using the stock boards it's pretty quiet. It would be fun to see what you come up with Rob.
 
jasonP said:
I added a footswitchable metro effects loop to it as well. Fun little amp to mod and it sounds great. Even with moving the circuit around and using the stock boards it's pretty quiet. It would be fun to see what you come up with Rob.
Click to expand...
It'll be a drop-in board. I was able to make a 100% duplicate of the Evolve DIY board over the weekend!
I can now take that as a baseline, figure out what I want and take things out and add things and quickly come up with my design.
For these two amp, I'm having resident at a local music venue, so sort have to dumb it down or players won't know how to use it, but it'll be a design for 3 full foot-switchable channels, plus switchable overdrive, plus switchable FX loop, then dumb it down and for the venue, will probably just have 2 channels....clean and dirty, with dual master (maybe) and FX loop always on in the circuit! Hope to have it laid out this weekend and send off to the fabricator to have PCBs made and twist up before the end of the month!
 
Clips sound great.

I've thought about picking up an Origin or SV20 to mod, after the Headfirst videos.
 
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