# DS-1, is there really a substitute?



## Shiny_Beast (Apr 16, 2009)

This is a fan boy thread for sure. I've been married to the DS-1 since time began. 

I usually play through my marshall so it doesn't get much use. But when ever I hook it up I'm always amazed, if I don't have a real amp to overdrive, this is what I want. 

It's got a weak low end that sounds a bit plasticy if you push it too hard, but once you get past that it's basically just raw gain on the front end. Every other drive pedal I've ever tried sounded cool in it's own way, but got tired sounding because of the compression, lack of dynamics, fake tube like tone etc...

I was looking for a way to get some drive at a lower volume so I stuck it in 0front of my Gibson Skylark and it just killed once I got it dialed in, lot's of bass needed for this amp. I usually run it into gainless tube amps so I do get a lot of added mojo from the amp, the pedal is just to box the wave.

I understand there may have been a revolution in guitar pedals since I got stuck on old faithfull lol. The OCD has come to my attention as a possible replacement <sniff sniff>. I've heard and read a lot of really good things about it, but I'm scheptical. They all come and they all fall lol.

Can the OCD or something similar really pull off the one trick the DS-1 does so well?


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## NB_Terry (Feb 2, 2006)

The Retro Sonic Distortion is supposed to do the DS-1 (also it can do the Proco Rat type sound) thing very well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaJIDNTZaPo


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## forum_crawler (Sep 25, 2008)

Shiny_Beast said:


> This is a fan boy thread for sure. I've been married to the DS-1 since time began.
> 
> I usually play through my marshall so it doesn't get much use. But when ever I hook it up I'm always amazed, if I don't have a real amp to overdrive, this is what I want.
> 
> ...


There are many options out there, the one that comes to mind first is the VOX Satchurator, which to my ears sounds like more refined version of the DS-1.

If you are looking for an OCD, I would also consider the Danelectro Cool Cat Drive (supposed to be a clone of the OCD), at a 1/4 of the price, you can't afford not to look at it.


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## Salokin (Nov 10, 2008)

*DS-1, OCD or both?*

I don' t think that you can replace the Ds-1 for the ocd, it' s 
two differents things. If the DS-1 is what you need, why pull off it
for an OCD? The OCD is a great overdrive, almost a distortion!

I like to use it plugged on 18v-, It sounds bigger, fatter, but it sounds very good too, plugged to 9v-. You can do that with OCD, and also with the Fulldrive 2. Plug it in any voltage between 9 or 18 volts negative center pin.


I guess that for the transparency of the sound of an OD/Dist, both are similar for me. You should search for a local Fulltone dealer.

http://www.fulltone.com/dlrframe.html 

You' ll find the closer Fulltone dealer that exist with that link.


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## Shiny_Beast (Apr 16, 2009)

Tried out the ocd at the local shop. Not too shabby, more overdrivey than distortion. The guy at the shop made a good case for it compared to my ds-1, less compressed with more highs and lows at higher settings. I'd have to hear it at some volume, maybe next time. I was auditioning pedals for my Dad who needs something more tuby at low volumes. I came up dry, probably just settle on some knd of tube screamer.


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## Ti-Ron (Mar 21, 2007)

NB_Terry said:


> The Retro Sonic Distortion is supposed to do the DS-1 (also it can do the Proco Rat type sound) thing very well.
> 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaJIDNTZaPo


Thanks Therry for the info! I didn't know that!


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## Shiny_Beast (Apr 16, 2009)

NB_Terry said:


> The Retro Sonic Distortion is supposed to do the DS-1 (also it can do the Proco Rat type sound) thing very well.
> 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaJIDNTZaPo


Ya, that's a cool link. There's a clip somewhere of some guy a/b'ing it with a modded DS-1. Simnilar textures, different freq response.


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## Shiny_Beast (Apr 16, 2009)

This looks like a pretty good all around pedal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W269KQ4OY74


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## Chito (Feb 17, 2006)

Try the Radial Tonebone Classic. I consider it the souped-up version of the DS-1 and more.


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## Budda (May 29, 2007)

I plan on getting a bodenhamer-modded DS-1 when I can, because my TSovChaos into the clean of the JSX just drops my jaw every single time.


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## Rugburn (Jan 14, 2009)

Chito said:


> Try the Radial Tonebone Classic. I consider it the souped-up version of the DS-1 and more.


I own a ToneBone Classic and really like it. I have to say though, those Boss distortion pedals of the 80's was not what I had in mind when I bought it. It can deliver some serious distortion if you need it however.

Shawn :smile:


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## z0z0 (Feb 19, 2009)

Wow - the ToneBone sounds interesting.

Finally something in Canada is cheaper than in the US

cdn$199 @ Guitar Shop
http://www.theguitarshop.ca/features.php?id=281

us$199 @ zzzounds and Guitar Center
http://www.zzounds.com/item--RADTBCLAS
http://www.guitarcenter.com/Radial-Tonebone-Classic-Tube-Distortion-Pedal-102062882-i1124764.gc

I assume this thing needs an external powersupply?
Damn I hate wires and powersupplies


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## Shiny_Beast (Apr 16, 2009)

After hearing some tube works stuff I steered away from tube pedals. They were cool and psycadelic, but didn't really have many usable tones. I guess the modern tube based pedals are a different breed, those Tonebone clips sound awesome. I'd still perfer a simpler smaller pedal sans tube. The nice thing about the DS-1 is I can stash it in my guitar case and pull it out for emergencies.

I was thinking the perfect pedal would be my DS-1 with a tighter bottom end, and an extra dial called, I dunno, fat, power, warmth? basically the main gain dials in the DS-1 gain I know and love, good for in front of a bassy tube amp, the other dial would add some sparkle and looseness, sound more like an amp, for when you are playing into something sterile, like an amp really low or some kind of vanilla SS amp.

My favourite pedal I've played around with so far is the j-drive. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2q-SFEROjg
It actually has a warmth dial. I was reviewing it from a differnet perspective when I was testing it so I'm not sure if it fiulls the bill, but I have to say that's one great sounding pedal as far as stomp boxes go. A little on the big side, with 4 dials and two switches.

I was reading about the DS-1 schematic 
http://www.premierguitar.com/Magazine/Issue/2008/Feb/Boss_DS_1_Mods.aspx
and just for the heck of it I think I'm going to try a mod. 

He mentions somewhere a there's a fork in the road splitting the freq cutoff for going through an overdrive circuit. Making the cutoff higher tightens up the bass, I"m going to drill a whole and try and put a pot there, call it "fat" or something, see what that does. I've got to open her up to fix what I think is an intermittent jack problem anyhow.


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## Stratin2traynor (Sep 27, 2006)

Keeley posted the DS-1 Ultra mod somewhere on the net. When I find the link I'll post it. Easy mod to do. I've done a couple of them.

Another mod you may like is the Monte Allums Mod. There are a few variations.


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## zontar (Oct 25, 2007)

For anybody in the Calgary area, Mother's has a Keeley modded DS-1 for sale--I didn't check the price though.

I love my DS-1, and my DF-2 (same distortion--just the feedback extra.)


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## Shiny_Beast (Apr 16, 2009)

some guy explains it here
http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-convert-your-DS-1-to-Keeley-All-seeing-eye-/


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## Shiny_Beast (Apr 16, 2009)

So I hacked it up, more or less along the lines of the "vintage" mod here 
http://www.premierguitar.com/Magazine/Issue/2008/Feb/Boss_DS_1_Mods.aspx
sans the led and the C3 swap. Threw a couple silver micas I had in, replaced a .47 polarized electrolytic in the signal path with a .68 poly, and upped the R right before the clippers to roll off more highs. 

Sounds pretty bad-ass for a stomp box

If everything north of noon on the tone knob wasn't useless before, it sure is now. It'd be really nice to be able to use the whole range for fine tuning.

I also discovered, according to some website, mine is a Japan model with the original opamp, not the long dash model though . That explains why it seemed to cost too much when I bought it a couple years back.


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## Stratin2traynor (Sep 27, 2006)

This is one of the sites I was talking about for the Kelley Ultra Mod (sounds awesome) http://www.geocities.com/overdrivespider/DS1/keeleyds1.htm

And these are the actual instructions from the Keeley Techs. I did this mod on a spare DS-1 and AB'd it against my actual Keeley DS-1.....exactly the same.


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## dino (Jan 6, 2009)

*Ds2*

All you people have to remember is that Boss DS1 led the way for all the others to try to do what they did. Either you want distortion or you don't and if you bought the DS1 then on course you wanted the real thing. What gets me is people buy distortion pedals by all makes and then say oh thats too much distortion " then just buy an overdrive pedal " as there is a huge difference in both sounds. With the DS2 you have both worlds of mild distortion to full blown distortion. The true bypass thing people is a head games gimic as I have been playing music for years and with many bands. People never complained to us that oh your sound isnt right as it isnt true bypassed by your pedals  Think of your favorite guitar players you idol from the past and they seemed to do very well without this true bypass. Unless your playing hank snows classics through your favorite pedals then I do not think the true bypass is important. Remember this is just my thoughts and opinion. 
Dino


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## Shiny_Beast (Apr 16, 2009)

I'm not a big pedal guy so now that I'm collecting a few pedals it's nice to know that when they are off it's just like having a few more feet of chord. 

I couldn't really tell you if I hear the sonic difference or not. I read a article somewhere about the case for non true bypass because of signal loss hooking up a bunch of bypassed pedals.

I've tried a bunch of variations on some of these mods and the best one so far seems to be the vintage from that page I linked. It kind of takes the tone stack and turns it into a "scratch" control which you have to leave pretty bassy, but most of the freq get passed straight through flat.


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## Jim DaddyO (Mar 20, 2009)

I looked up the Fulltone Fulldrive2 mosfet on you tube and I am really impressed with that one. Their Robin Trower Overdrive sounds good too!


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## keefsdad (Feb 7, 2006)

I had a Ds-1 and sold it, as it was too harsh for me. A friend of mine has a Keeley modded one though, and he sounds great (but he always has.)


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## Shiny_Beast (Apr 16, 2009)

it is harsh, and it's nmostly unusable, a one trick pony. 

You get the tone somewhere between 9 and 11, the gain at around 3 and run into into preferably some kind of tube amp, any old POS will do lol, and if you dial things in just right you can end up with just the right kind of thick sustain, enough of the highs rolled off to live with, and just a touch of fake compression and pick attack that adds up to a sound you can at least use and doesn't get tiring after 10 minutes.

It's a poor substitute for a real amp, but what's surprising is I've never played through anything that came any closer.  The Overdrive pedals and screamers are better for extremely dry situations, like going straight into a board. But they are usually overcompressed and get boring sounding pretty quick and are best kicked in for lead breaks IMO.

I've been you-tubing for the last week, I'm betting anyone of the j-drive, zendrive, timmy, eternity, OCD and many others would actually be usable as "leave on" pedals.


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## infinitemonkey (Jan 20, 2008)

Shiny_Beast said:


> it is harsh, and it's nmostly unusable, a one trick pony.


I agree. I had a DS-1 and never used, mainly because of the harshness. I can see where it might be useful, but it didn't 

I bought a mod kit off eBay and it cut a lot of the harshness out, but I still had other pedals that did that one trick better.

To top it off, thanks to this forum, I found the GoudieFX OTP (yup, it stands for One Trick Pony) that does that DS-1's one trick so much better. Its range is pretty limited, as the name suggests, but for high gain stuff, it's excellent. It's a lot more expensive than a DS-1, though, to be fair.


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## zontar (Oct 25, 2007)

I don't find unmodded DS-1's to be one trick ponies at all. I sue mine for soft fuzz, massive fuzz, sharp distortion, gain to cut through the other instruments, etc.

Works for me.


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## Samsquantch (Mar 5, 2009)

zontar said:


> I don't find unmodded DS-1's to be one trick ponies at all. I sue mine for soft fuzz, massive fuzz, sharp distortion, gain to cut through the other instruments, etc.
> 
> Works for me.


DS-1's do not produce any type of fuzz tone, sorry...Maybe fizz, but definitely not fuzz.


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## zontar (Oct 25, 2007)

Samsquantch said:


> DS-1's do not produce any type of fuzz tone, sorry...Maybe fizz, but definitely not fuzz.


I disagree. Maybe you're defining fuzz differently than I am, but it is not fizz.
I love the sound of the soft fuzz I can get with it, as well as other sounds.

And in the end it's a good thing we don't all strive for the same sound--the world would be boring that way.


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## Head (Feb 10, 2007)

I'd pay that extra couple of dollars for a BD-2.


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## Shiny_Beast (Apr 16, 2009)

I checked out the OTP, the sound clips were pretty cool. Too metal for me tho. That guy's got it backwards if you ask me, I've been thinking about a pedal with a hard clipping front end into a softer backend, not the other way around.

I just built a barber ltd silver clone tx to the schematic they freely posted on the web (tx Barber). AB-ing it next to my now modified (and maybe soon to return to stock) ds-1 is hilarious. The Barber sounds like an amp, the ds-1 is...well...a ds-1 lol. 

Still at a jam given a big fat tube amp but short on distortion, I'd probably reach for the ds-1. I think I'd like to check out that rat pedal.


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## Francis Fargon (May 31, 2009)

Man!Ive been using a old boss Ds-1 "longdash" like forever,i use it with a 65 
silvertone 1484 and 1485 amps.I set the tone at 10 oclock,the vol at 11 oclock and dist. maxed out.It works great for me and the kind of "hardrock
bluseypoppunkgarage"that iam playing.For me,there is No subtitute to the 
"longdash".Yeah! No subtitute,there is no subtitute,yeah!No subtitute!
Thats why, if it was stolen from me,i would first cry,then go on a thief hunt.
Once i found him,ill knock some of his teeth out.Or mabye just because i love it so much,i would do this a special way,Climbed up is a$$ and pull them from
the inside...or mabye i would just cry.Whatever!

Frank


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## Chito (Feb 17, 2006)

I think once in a while you come across a DS-1 that works. I have an MIJ DS-1 but I never did like it. Instead, for about 10 years until a couple of years ago or so, I used a Super Distortion/Feedbacker (DF-2) which people say is just a DS-1 with the added feedback circuitry. I also got a Keeley DS-1 and I didn't get a liking for it either. I used that DF-2 with a Fender Twin.

The DS-1 get dissed a lot, but I know before the boutique pedals came out, in the 80's and 90's, there were quite a number of guitar players using it.


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## zontar (Oct 25, 2007)

Chito said:


> ...Instead, for about 10 years until a couple of years ago or so, I used a Super Distortion/Feedbacker (DF-2) which people say is just a DS-1 with the added feedback circuitry. I also got a Keeley DS-1 and I didn't get a liking for it either. I used that DF-2 with a Fender Twin.
> 
> The DS-1 get dissed a lot, but I know before the boutique pedals came out, in the 80's and 90's, there were quite a number of guitar players using it.


The DF-2 is the same distortion as the DS-1.
I have both,, I use both--they sound the same to me, but that's okay--as I mentioned before I set them each for different sounds--and I can add distortion before, after, or before & after other effects. I don't have to decide to put my distortion before or after another effect--I can put it on either or both sides--If I feel like it. Although I'm played many jams with just one of them into a Roland JC-60, and while my playing won't blow too many people away--most of the others loved my tone, and many wanted to try playing through my gear. Of course they didn't sound like me, exactly--some sounded quite different.

So to the detractors-
So use the effects that work for you and for what you're playing and who you're playing with, and if you like an unmodded DS-1, as I do--great!
If you don't, I'm okay with that too--just realize it's not the pedal for your sound. A friend of mine used one of the old DOD distortions with just one knob--I hated the sound of it--but it worked for his playing. When we jammed it sounded great. When I used it, it sounded muddy. And that was using his amp. And we both used humbuckers.


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## david henman (Feb 3, 2006)

...in this context, i'm thinking the FET Dream would be a good choice.

-dh


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## Matsal535 (Apr 26, 2009)

The Ds-1 is a matter of taste I guess... I never liked it and I'm not into boutique stuff either. I'm addicted to my RAT


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