Boss DS-1

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A Boss DS-1 distortion pedal

The Boss DS-1 is a basic distortion pedal manufactured by the Roland Corporation under the brand name Boss in 1978. It has one tone knob, one level knob, and one distortion knob. It produces a heavy and harsh overdriven sound, and has been famously used in songs such as Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit". The DS-1 has also been a trademark of the sounds of such acclaimed guitarists as Joe Satriani, John Petrucci of Dream Theater, Steve Vai, who uses a DS-1 with Robert Keeley's 'Ultra' modification and the Analog Man DS1/Pro mod, and John Frusciante, who frequently uses the DS-1, particularly for older Red Hot Chili Peppers songs.

The DS-1 is normally used by electric guitarists, but some bassists have been known to use the pedal. Some bass players include Chris Wolstenholme of Muse on the album Showbiz (he also employs a Big Muff for pure fuzz), as well as Mark Stoermer of The Killers using the pedal live with a Boss GE-7 EQ to remove treble.

[edit] How it works

The DS-1 has a very simple circuit, based around a single op-amp. The distortion is produced using a variable gain circuit with diodes shorting the output to ground to produce hard clipping of the input waveform similar to the ProCo Rat distortion pedal. This distortion stage is followed by a passive tone filter and volume control. The tone control is scooped in the midrange, similar to the the Big Muff. It consists of a simple fixed -6dB/okt low pass filter and a simple fixed -6dB/okt high pass filter using a potentiometer to mix the two signals. This is different than the tone control of the ProCo Rat distortion pedal which has a simple -6dB/okt low pass filter with variable cutoff frequency to remove the higher frequencies from the distorted signal.

As with many pedals which have circuits, modifying the DS-1 is very common. Such circuit modifications include those that can be done by the user, using schematics to fit new components or remove existing ones, and those that are done by effects companies, such as that of the notable effects manufacturer and modifiers Analog Man and Robert Keeley Electronics to gain to add natural low signals onto original tones or to have got other effects.