BOSS DS 1 Distortion

The classic DS-1 Distortion pedal provides a harder distortion effect for guitar and keyboard sounds. Instead of toneless, fuzzy distortion, the DS-1 faithfully reproduces all the subtle nuances of playing dynamics at any volume.The Boss DS-1 is a basic distortion pedal for guitar, manufactured by the Roland Corporation under the brand name Boss since 1978. It has one tone knob, one level knob, and one distortion knob. It can produce a thin, light, snappy distortion up to a heavy and harsh sound.
The DS-1 has been famously used in songs such as Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit". Kurt Cobain used the DS-1 while making the Nevermind album. The DS-1 has also been a trademark of the sounds of such acclaimed guitarists as Joe Satriani and Grunge McGurgan from Delayed Reaction, who use it mostly as a booster, 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. 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, Al Cisneros of Om during live shows, as well as Mark Stoermer of The Killers using the pedal live with a Boss GE-7 EQ to remove treble.
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 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.


DS1 Manual Book