All user reviews of 3/5 for the Boss DS-1 Distortion

I aquired the unit through a band mate. The price paid is unknown, but it currently retails for approximately $135-139 (AUSD).

It has the solid (some might say indestructible) construction typical of Boss compact effects pedals, which I certainly appreciate, and the circuit board is seperate from the battery compartment and sealed from same with a rubber grommet. This prevents damage to the circuit when changing the battery. Controls include volume (akin to a line level control) distortion and tone. It has a reasonably smooth sound with good sustain, but it is easily discernable as a transistor type distortion. It's not terribly versatile unit but it does a handful of sounds quite well.

I dislike a few things about the DS-1. After about 9 o'clock on the tone knob, the tone becomes unpleasantly nasally with all of my setups. It's quite limited in the tones it can produce, but as I said, it will please you with the ones it can if your into Nirvana, etc. It's lower gain settings can get quite bluesy. It doesn't have allot of gain, and at full gain it develops an unpleasant sort of 'gonk' to the midrange that sounds like clipping. it sounds best at low to mid gain settings to my ear.

Excellent, from an engineering point of view, the unit is both practical to use and maintain (with regards to changing batteries) and solid as a rock. I have never had a problem with a Boss compact pedal and do not expect to in future.

It's a competent pedal with excellent and solid construction with very gig-worthy battery access and sealing, and as an aside it's very light on batteries. However, it doesn't have enough gain for some tastes. A kind of gravelly distortion.. has a bit of mongrel in it. Try it.

This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com

The Boss DS-1 is probably one of the most popular distortion pedals on the market and is a very basic pedal with very few bells and whistles. It has a simple layout of controls. A Tone knob that adjusts the EQ settings of the guitar, a Distortion knob that adjusts the amount of gain or saturation of the distortion, and a Level knob that adjusts the overall volume of the pedal. A single input jack, an output jack, and the option of running off a 9 volt power supply or a battery source rounds out the features of this pedal.

UTILIZATION

This pedal is easy to hook up with any amplifier, just put it in front of your amp's signal chain and you are off to the races. It is possible to get a slight breakup overdrive type of distortion out of the pedal and all the way up to a standard rock and roll type distortion. This is not intended to be a warm overdrive or a metal pedal, but more of a middle of the road type distortion pedal. A warrenty and manual are included with the pedal when purchased, but honestly neither are needed. The pedal works like any other dirt pedal and is built like a brick. Boss is known for making very reliable pedals and this one is no exception.

SOUND QUALITY

This is where the pedal is lacking. There are a few good tones to be had out of this pedal, but mostly the pedal sounds generic and stale. It lacks depth and texture of more expensive pedals and while it's meant to be a middle of the road type distortion, it rides the fence too much and does nothing exceptionally well. The light overdrive sounds are grainy and thin, and the saturated sounds are sterile and fizzy. The pedal does a decent basic distortion sound with the Gain set around 2 oclock, the Tone rolled back a little less than noon, and the volume to taste, but it is nothing inspiring. The pedal is also useful as a solo boost with the gain lowered and the volume increased to push the front end of a tube amp, although there are better pedals out there for this job in the same price range with better EQ options.

OVERALL OPINION

Overall this is a good pedal for a beginner to intermediate player with a single channel amp that needs some distortion sounds, but the experienced player with a taste for tone will probably be better served going in another direction. Boss tried to make a jack of all trades pedal and came out with a pedal that does neither low or high gain well. This pedal is useful in one or two aspects (basic generic distortion or as a tube amp boost), but is mostly just too bland for most applications. I believe the price bracket is why Boss has sold so many of these, and these days there are just better options (Digitech Bad Monkey or Blues Driver, Danelectro Cool Cat Series to name a few) Some people send these off to pedal modders to be tweaked, but I would just count my losses on the "orange brick" and go for a nicer pedal all together, or open the pedal up and try to do some of these mods myself for the learning experience using a platform that is inexpensive. Though Boss is a great company with reliable products, there are just better sounding pedals out there than the Boss DS-1.

Analogue distortion pedals while bte. 3 potentiomtres: Tone, Dist, and Level.
His ditable (yes, turn the knobs and the sound changes! Mad!)

UTILIZATION

Config gnrale edition and ultra simple. Manuel clear

SOUND QUALITY

It is the drip pan that is ca: Its cold, synthetic, mtallique, it looks like a distortion straight out of a multi-purpose. And on top of that, it blows ..

OVERALL OPINION

PDAL not a good march CHRE. If you like the sounds cold and mtalliques, go for it .. (I personally dtest.)

Otherwise it can play the rle of booster (tone and dist 0, a background level)

Analogue distortion pedals

UTILIZATION

Using ultra simple. Nothing to say.

SOUND QUALITY

The sound is especially trs! In my view, contrary to what is said is not a PDAL go anywhere or do. a range from rock to grunge not Fuzz trs exploitable. Ds that Exceeds the first shots of Tonnal sound is immediately screaming. It must therefore be coupled with other effects such as an equalizer and a comprsseur. however it does not gnre bcp of breath.
For my part, I changed it in a Schma I can send. For 15 components and 1:30 mounting bcp has changed things.
I put 4 because the original is not trrible.

OVERALL OPINION

I use it for 6 years, I have a MT-2 for heavier sounds but it does happen to use it for Rock sounds because DS-1 is sometimes too dgueu.
Overall, if it is found to be 30 and okaz to make changes, was worth it. If not, better to move towards a model that offers cleaner sound and warm. In today's market, the choices abound.

See below

UTILIZATION

The configuration of the pedals, you turn the knobs bah (except may be the tone ) And you find your sound.
The manual is very basic, there are a few examples of configuration, but not too good gnial I find it crazy and then the manual!

SOUND QUALITY

Well actually I like the bin and dtest the pedals! I like its "big" rock out what can and cot fuzz and a little dirty when I push the dist and the tone (how horrible the tone) but it is so commonplace, no personality and it does its job that's all. Another thing, the Tone knob of a really crap ingrable APRS 9am.
I think this boss is suitable for people looking for a basic distortion and good quality without seeking the stamp of a Maxon or Fulltone (I know it's not the same price).

OVERALL OPINION

I have a few days (I have to go crawling to my dealer), I have tried many in this price range and for me it is one of the best but not for me. The report qualitprix is ​​excellent.

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.

The classic orange pedal, the BOSS DS-1. It's used by tons of players, from bedroom noodlers to arena playing rock stars. It has Tone, Distortion, and Level knobs. It's built very well, like pretty much all BOSS pedals. It's an all analog distortion, and stock it offers distortion ranging from almost light-overdrive to higher-gain rock.

UTILIZATION

I can't say how well the manual explains things, as I only had it in for me to mod it, but it's not exactly hard to use. The "Tone" knob controls the tone (Duh!) which goes from muddy to incredibly shrill way to fast (More on that later though.). The "Distortion" knob controls the gain, and the "Level" knob controls, well, the level. Plug in the cable from your guitar into the input, and then plug the cable coming from the output into the next effect or your amp, tweak knobs to taste, and play. Doesn't get much simpler than this pedal.



SOUND QUALITY

This is where the DS-1 (Stock, mind you) falls VERY short. Un-modded it's very either very shrill, or very muddy, depending on where you have the tone control set. Although the mods for it are very easy to do, this review is for the stock DS-1, so that I'm how I'm rating it.

It just in general lacks the "oopmh" that one expects, and has very little low end. I used this with a BC Rich Warbeast NJ Deluxe loaded with active EMG's, and the amp I was using was a Peavey Ultra all-tube amp pushing a 5150 Straight cab loaded with Celestion V30's and G12T-75's. Even with that rig it still sounded nasty. It was either dark and muddy, or much very bright and shrill. No matter where I tweaked the knobs to I couldn't get a tone that I liked.

OVERALL OPINION

Overall, unless you are comfortable modding guitar pedals, then I have to suggest that you stay away from this pedal. It might work OK if you had a VERY dark guitar, baring that there are many better distortion pedals out there to choose from.

I have to say though, for the price that it is, it's a very good platform for modding. I do want to add that after doing the Marshall Mods to the pedal it sounded infinity better. It turned out to be less shrill and had more gain on tap than it did before the mod, but was still able to clean up very well.