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Boss DS-1 Distortion
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Boss DS-1 Distortion
badgerific badgerific

« Okay first distortion. »

Published on 04/07/11 at 12:14
Standard stompbox format of 1/4" in and outs, 9V adaptor or battery to power and a bypass footswitch. Not rackable or editable with a computer. Analog circuitry.

Volume, Tone and Gain controls.

UTILIZATION

Easy to set up, just plug your guitar in, your amp to the output and a battery inside and you're ready to go. The controls are intuitive and easy to work out.

SOUND QUALITY

I've used this pedal with a lot of different guitars and amplifiers and all I've got is a quite mediocre sound with every combination that I've tried. I find this pedal to be very nasally and harsh in tone. While reducing the level of the tone can remove this harshness it can become quite muddy.

Another thing about the sound of this pedal I dislike is the buffered bypass, it colors the tone of my rig quite noticeably when it's not engaged which I'm not a huge fan of, although it can be useful for long signal chains.

I find versions of this pedal to be much better sounding. Even simple modifications such as removing one of the clipping diodes can make this pedal much more useable. There's a wealth of the information available on the internet for modifications of this pedal which can change many different characteristics of it.

OVERALL OPINION

The thing I like most about this pedal is the price, it can be picked up used for pretty cheap and It's a passible distortion unit. I also really like how useable this pedal can be after modification.

I dislike the buffered bypass and the harshness of the distortion produced most about this pedal.

Overall I think this is an okay first distortion pedal as it's cheap and easy to get hold of and can sound okay in certain settings.