Nicely done! An often scoffed at pedal, it's great. LOTS of bands, even shoegaze stuff back in the day, used this pedal. Sometimes I wonder if BOSS should just charge more to see if its appeal increases haha.
Most people had a bad experience with this pedal because they did not understand that the tone knob if cranked will make you sound like garbage and your notes will be lost in the mix. Only usable with the tone almost off. It sounds great on a pedal board right after your overdrive pedal.
The magic is running it into a crunchy amp with low output pups. This pedal came out in the 70’s. Makes sense right? It sounds amazing into a cranked tube amp. Great pedal.
So good to see a pedal demoed in a style I like and might actually play. So much metal and bluesy stuff out there that I just don’t connect with. I bought this pedal in a pawn shop, beat up to hell. I’ve never been much of pedal or tone guy, so I’m still learning. I always had trouble dialing this in and you’ve given good ideas of how to make it work!
You had me at. "Do NOT use a very Clean tone." That's when I knew you knew this pedal, for starters. Hey! I just realized that maybe I can use this properly after the superb Blues Driver!
DS-1 is my go to for stoner rock type tones, once I realized it likes an amp with breakup instead of crystal clean it was a game changer, my only complaint is that the DS-1 always feels quiet. found a killer heavily modded DS-1 clone from a company called Drunk Beaver that fixes that problem and has switchable op amp and diode clipping.
This is indeed the best demo of the DS1 I've seen. Definitely considering getting one. Thank you for showing the great tones you can get out of it and dispelling the fizz fear.
I have a shitty $50 no brand amp, it only has gain tone and volume . Ironically when I put the tone all the way down on the pedal and distortion at 12 0 clock it sounds amazing.
I've owned and used Boss DS-1's for about 20 years now, I think they're criminally misunderstood, but when used correctly (tone under 12 o'clock) (gain under 12 o'clock) to push an already distorted amp, they're pretty much one of the most iconic drive sounds ever produced, mine sits on a board next to an Ibanez TS9 another pedal totally misunderstood and misused very often.
Excellent demo of a legendary pedal. I've owned DS-1s for decades. Have one now among my other pedals. I have a Marshall that gets more than enough gain for me right out of the box, but every now and then I like to turn the gain down and use one of my Boss pedals to give it a tweak just for variety. Yes, the magic trick is using just enough breakup from the amp and pushing it with the pedal. It's all about balance, about getting the amp, the pedal, and the pickups in your guitar to make the magic happen. This is how the greatest guitar tones were created, NOT with rare super boutique amps. That's a myth. While there may be some instances where this is true, any decent producer can get the ultimate sound with just a Marshall, a Fender and a good pedal. The great thing about a pedal like the DS-1 is it's a transparent pedal and it doesn't color the tone of your amp and guitar too much. As I said before, it's all a balance.
The "trick" to the DS-1 is in the amp settings, not so much the pedal itself. I'll differ a little from the advice from #1: Instead start from a good warm cleanish amp sound -- on a tube amp with some good warm bottom end -- and then nearly anything you do with the pedal will sound wonderful. I can nail almost any distortion sound from the 60's through early 90s on that amp setting with the DS-1. But the more gain you have on the amp itself, the harsher the overall sound when using the pedal. You'll then be turning the pedal down trying to find some elusive sweet spot, much like hunting unicorns. At the extreme, if you start from a heavily over-driven amp, you'll get nothing but fizz and unusable noise. The DS-1 isn't the best for modern death metal.... but it wasn't designed to do that either. Think Zeppelin, Thin Lizzy, and Sabbath through 80s Ozzy.
What about something not exactly a tube amp but valve tube celestion 12 inch vox Cambridge 40. Some of the high gain stuff too much jesus and especially the dial of dif tones I really don’t enjoy when mixed with ds 1 feel like have to walk on eggshells. If i go to a really high gain channel has litterly screeched so loudly unplugged immediately and same thing with irig hd 2 mixed with the effect tone dial on amp. Shit can get outta hand
When you said about high output guitar pickups, how high did you mean? I was thinking about getting a version of a jb brigde pickup. Would that be too high?
We don't know the JB. Generally speaking, we would try to avoid active pickups or very high output humbuckers. Single coils or PAF-style humbuckers are perfectly fine. This is just a suggestion based on our experience and taste, there are no rules, in the end.
Bro I love this video, it absolutely inspired me to use my ds1 the right way and love it for what it is . Could you please make a video of what you are playing cause it sounds awesome as fuck . Thanks again .
Got mine a week ago but I'm still experimenting with new settings. I never knew it cleaned up so well, I'll have to try it. I've also been using some high output humbuckers so I'll give the single coils a try as well. All in all, the video had some good tips. Learned something new, so that's a like from me
I'm still disappointed that I sold this many years ago as a teen. It was my first pedal, and I was playing it through the lowest cost Fender amp. And I didn't know how to dial anything in so of course it sounded horrible.
I got the Waza DS1 because I just wanted straight up distortion, I wanted the sound of my guitar but distorted and it gave me exactly that. Then I noticed I liked using my blues driver with all the knobs at noon as my crunchy or clean sound, and I loved cranking up the gain on it for distortion. When I got a Screamin Blues, which is a blues driver with low and high eq, I used that as my all around heavier distortion and my blues driver as my creamy overdrive. Now my DS1 is just my guitar solo button. It's thick, creamy, loud, mid rangey, and I can use it with just the one pedal alone and get all the distortion I need or add a blues driver or boost pedal to it. I love it.
The ds-1 is more than a distortion pedal. It is "The Distortion Pedal". I stack an eh soul food before the ds-1 to make it angry then into a Carr Rambler 1x12 combo.
I feel like this video more than adequately gave the DS-1 the love it deserves. Lately I've been stacking it on top of an EHX Soul Food (Klon Centaur clone with the Soul Food being my "clean" tone) and it sounds great.
That's a good idea. The clean on my fender champion is kinda lame. Never even thought of running a pedal for a clean tone. Do you think many bands do that?
I've had a DS-1 for years and I've never been a huge fan and I can still honestly say I'm not a fan of any of these tones :( I want to like it so badly but theres just something missing in the high end that I cant do without
You could totally try an eq pedal after or before it! If you like the distortion but miss the high end. I did that with my klon knock off pedal, it cut a lot of treble so I added it back in before and after so it sounds great!
It’s just a nice to have pedal with a one trick pony setting. It’s only a “distortion” effect pedal which only adds distortion to your signal, not a preamp pedal which shapes your tone
Thanks for the tips, great to hear some 90s riffs n tunes, seems most guitar demos are blues or shredding. I've got a guitar bit like a jazzmaster with p90 pickups in should work well, and maybe my strat clone. Im waiting for my pedal to arrive. With the filters you've used the pedal looks like an evil toy robot while I write this Haha.
hey i put the tone pass 12 and even to the max… but the distortion never high..nothing is wrong with that…can be sound crunchy like SRV, Soundgarden-ish too.
Music history wise, this pedal is far more iconic than the general musician population seem to want to admit. I don't know why that is, but just google it and see. Very nice demo, thank-you for posting.
Haven't tried one of these at home yet, decided to give the DS-2 a shot first as that's what Kurt started using later in his career, and it is really something. If you guys love these grunge tones but want something more scooped and a bit fuzzier, it's worth a shot
@@metal571 yeah in the first setting it's more scooped than the turbo setting but still has about the same scoop as a ds1 imo. At least that's what I've found. The big difference for me is that it has less sustain and is a bit smoother than an actual ds1. Almost like an sd1 with more fizz. I actually prefer the ds2 turbo mode in clean amps but definitely prefer the sustain and clarity of the ds1 in a marshall.
@@LeviBulger that makes more sense. The lack of gain caught me a bit by surprise considering how much ds1 seems to have. Haven't tried it yet but I might try running my soul food into it as a clean boost
A little tip I've learned from using this pedal if your one that uses heavier picks and plays kinda hard try using a lighter pick or be less aggressive with strumming I've found that with the tips on this video and that you can get a really good tone
I disagree about the dirty amp thing. This pedal sounds amazing through a totally clean amp. You just need to be using the right type of amp. The DS-1 seems to love most Fender style amps, but sounds muffled and lifeless through darker, british style amplifiers. If you're using something like a Marshall or Orange amp, this pedal might sound better with a bit of amp gain, because the added gain will compensate for some of the treble frequencies that are getting dumped by the amp's tone stack. It will still sound muffled and compressed, but that's due to the amp style, not due to any shortcomings of the pedal itself. Running through a crystal clear Fender Twin, the DS-1 has a very nice EQ curve and sounds great on its own.
That has puzzled me, many say it sounds bad into a Fender amp, but I also use the DS-1 into the clean channel of a Fender amp and it's sounds great (DS-1 Tone around 10 o'clock). This is using fairly low output Alnico II humbuckers on a semi-hollow guitar (so fairly warm tone). Not finding the DS-1 quite so good with single coils; more EQ experimenting required.
I'm playing through a katana head on the crunch channel, tone and dist at less than noon, still sounds buddy and gross. Not sure where I'm doing wrong.
My usual settings for my ds is having my amps gain at 12 on then clean channel, the having the tone on the ds 1 set to about 10-11 ish, dist set to max and level on max
Last year I have bought a cheap knock off of a classic flying v. Swaped its pickups for the chinese epiphone " alnico classics" that come on chinese entry level epis. You whouldnt believe how amazing that set sounded trough the good old DS-1. The orange box just loved them low gain pickups.
Thanks for just getting to the point & demo - it is so nice not to listen to five minutes of talking first. This is pretty much how I used mine but made the mistake of often starting with a clean tone.
I got to know your channel thanks to this video. I also underestimated the DS-1, and preferred to buy Digitech Hot Head as one of the first distortion pedals, which, although it is a clone of the Boss pedal, allowed me to customize exactly the sound that I always wanted. I immediately noticed how you design the video and really like how you meticulously compare different pedals, do not focus on what is cheaper and what is expensive or rare like other bloggers. In my opinion, you really have one of the best channels on the subject along with Andy from Proguitarshop and Ryan Lutton. I hope you will have even more views and subscribers, you really do great reviews.
This pedal cannot be put in a pedalboard with other pedals, its volume is too low. It is even lower than clean, in fact when you switch from clean to distorted, the volume drops
I used one for years. Plugged into a Fender tweed. One trick is to dime the gain and then back it off a hair. You can hear the change. It compresses the input a bit which smoothes the bite out. Now a Blues Driver, run fairly clean in front adds a boost and with that you can run it into a clean amp; tube is better. Super Overdrive works well. Lots of tones but you have to work it. Everything including your amp eq makes a difference. The DS-1 IS a great pedal. Oh the Keeley mod does wonders!
I agree. Recently bought one used, mint for £40. Had Boss ODs in the past but always seemed thin and harsh, not what I was looking for. Finally settled in an OCD V1.4, rich sound, but improved with a treble booster (kit built) in front especially if warm source (humbuckers/semi hollow guitar). Thought I'd try the DS-1, expected it gets close to the OCD + Treble booster in one go...it does, plus more high end distortion, for a quarter the price! Still use the OCD or/and Treble booster for classic OD.
You're right! With "high output pickups" we don't mean all humbuckers. We use the DS-1 with our vintage PAF and it sounds great. Unfortunately, modern pickups have way more output than many vintage (or good) humbuckers.
SSL-5s are only high output when compared to their traditional counterparts. A vintage humbucker could still have more output. What the DS-1 doesn’t like is seeing something in the Super Distortion range, or active EMGs.
@@thebetterspidey6115 yea tru. I have hot rodded JB humbuckers on the other strat and this pedal sounds great through that as well. Maintains it's sound even when I split the coils.
I have the black sd1, I generally don't have it in my rig as I prefer high gain amps with a screamer or alternately blues breakers into a Marshall or Fender
So i have this high wistle sound even when my volume on my guitar is off Is this because i have seymour duncan sh-4 bridge humbucker ? Or Is this something else i can fix ??
I got my DS1 in 1987 and then got the Boss CE-2 chorus pedal from my guitar teacher a few months later for 25 bucks. That pedal was from 1979 or 1980. I didn't realize how much money people are getting for those older chorus pedals now.
this explains why this pedal sounds so great on my Filtertron equipped guitar and like garbage on my Riffian equipped baritone. BTW, this pedal does something else that I, and maybe also you, did not expect: treat it like an HM2 and dime everything... it's not an HM2 but it still saws! I think it's up there with the Rat for versatility.
Nice. I have one,,,,store credit for a Super Shifter. Also a Micro Cube 1st gen. That i loved. DS1 just sits (Bad Monkey or BBII first). Tried a dial in during shut down. Time for another go :)
We don't have experience with the Pure Sky but both BD2 and DS are great. If you want to stack one of them with the Pure sky we would try first with the BD2 at low/mid gain.
