
Follow along as the Wampler Pedals leader shows several tweaks you can easily make to personalize your orange box of rock.
If you've been in a music store anytime since 1978, you've no doubt seen the ubiquitous orange Boss DS-1 Distortion pedal. Universally recognized as a good, inexpensive distortion pedal, you've probably even owned one or two in the past. Although it houses a simple circuit design, it produces a very good sound, particularly for a mass-produced pedal. Let's look a little more closely at the circuit and check out some changes that are available to make this great pedal even better.
The circuit is a buffered bypass circuit with electronic switching, as are all Boss pedals. The circuit comes in through R1, a 1K resistor, and then travels through C1, a .047 microfarad, or µf, capacitor into the first buffer. This buffer goes out through C2 and then into a JFET (junction gate field-effect transistor), which is part of the switching. If the pedal is off, the signal goes out to the switching circuit and through the output through Q7, which is the other JFET. These JFETs act as a switch, allowing the signal to either go through the distortion circuit or out through the buffers, producing a clean signal.
Click to download a full-size PDF of the schematic.
When the pedal is on, signal travels to Q6, through C3 and into a transistor gain stage. R7 controls the gain of this circuit by changing the voltage bias, consisting of a 470k resistor which you can increase or decrease in value to adjust gain before the next stage. Increasing the value increases gain, while decreasing it will give you a little less gain overall but will tighten up the DS-1's low-end response, ridding it of the flubbiness many people dislike. We can also decrease C3 to get this same effect by not allowing as much bass to come through. I like to change its value to either .022µf or .033µf if I'm looking for a less flubby tone. To clarify, to me "flubby" means a deeply compressed tonality. C4, which has a value of 250 picofarads (pF) also filters out some highs. Changing this won't do too much, although you may be able to coax a little more brightness by changing it to a 100 pF capacitor.
The signal then goes out through C5 into the opamp. This opamp is used in a unique way to clip the signal. R11 controls the gain in combination with the distortion knob, R13 and C8. The gain control is set up this way to enable the clipping of higher frequencies as you turn the distortion up. When it's turned down, it allows lower frequencies in – giving it a muddy sound since the signal is clipped beforehand through the transistor gain circuits, then clipped again when the distortion control is turned down. The first stage clipping is still occurring and as a result, the pedal doesn't sound as clear and articulate as many would like. R13 and C8 are part of this "non-inverting" opamp circuit which provides negative feedback to ground. This is important for several reasons. The resistor value of R13 and the capacitor value of C8 basically provide a frequency range where the signal is made to clip. In this case all frequencies above 33hz is being clipped. To contrast, a Tubescreamer only lets frequencies above 728 hz clip. This means that none of the lower bass frequencies are being boosted and/or clipped in the Tubescreamer.
The signal goes out through R14, which is a 2.2k resistor, through C9, which is a .47µf capacitor running across two diodes – D4 and D5 – and then to ground. All the usual diode tricks can be done here to allow more asymmetric clipping or different clipping flavors. Here C10 is also in parallel with D4 and D5 and is used to filter out highs in conjunction with R14. R14 and C10 form a low pass filter, cutting out high frequencies.
Go to indyguitarist.com/filter.htm and scroll to the bottom. Plug these values into the corresponding fields to determine which frequencies are being filtered. With the current values you will find it's filtering everything above 7k, which helps to smooth things out a little bit. If it's too bright, replace R14 with a resistor valued at 3.3k, allowing more highs to be filtered out, or try a 4.7k resistor to filter out everything above 3.3kHz.
After traveling through the diodes and the capacitor, the signal goes through a Big Muff - inspired tone control. There are many things we can do to manipulate the tone here, and a great resource is the Duncan Tone Stack calculator, available at duncanamps.com/tsc/. Experiment with different values to find the tone you're looking for. In the stock version of the pedal, the tone is a bit "scooped," meaning that there is little mid frequencies allowed through making the tone a little "thin" sounding. We can change that quite easily however. Check out the suggested changes in the charts below to get a warmer tone, a scooped mid tone or simply less highs.
After the tone control the signal travels through the level control and then out through R18, which is a 10k resistor, and then on to Q7, which is the other side of the JFET switching circuit. In its on state, it goes past Q7, through C13 – which is a .047µf capacitor – through yet another output buffer and then a resistor, a capacitor and finally through the output.
Let's look at some modifications that will have your DS-1 doing your bidding in no time.
Classic JCM-type Marshall Tones:
Modern Distortion Tones:
Vintage Distortion Tones:
If you like the general sound of the DS-1 but are looking for less highs and more of a tonal range change C10 to a capacitor with a larger value. Stock is .01"F for a frequency roll-off of 7.2kHz.
Less Shrill Highs:
All in all, the Boss DS-1 Distortion is an inexpensive pedal that can rival many of the best boutique pedals simply by changing the circuitry a little. While this may seem difficult, technical and out of reach, it really is very simple if you know what to change and where to change it. I hope that I've given you the knowledge and courage necessary to change your pedal from a mouse into a monster. Happy soldering!
[Updated 11/8/21]
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The Tour Collection is defined by a minimalistic, vintage-inspired aesthetic, top-of-the-line components, and a simplified electronics configuration featuring new, custom pickups by Supro.
Available in the collection is the 16-inch-wide double-cutaway DC, the 15-inch-wide single-cutaway SS, and a 14-inch-wide Mini DC. Each model comes in three finishes: Slate Blue, Solid Wine, and Solid Black.
Every detail of the Tour Collection was chosen to achieve retro minimalism. Small diamond fingerboard inlays match 1930s-style diamond f-holes, and an undersized Throwback Scroll-style headstock achieves excellent head-to-body balance. The collection also features satin nickel hardware and custom Vintage Deluxe Grover tuners with a 15:1 gear ratio. Each model also features a simplified two-knob electronics configuration with 50s-style wiring to retain top-end clarity upon rolling off the volume knob. The neck shape in the Tour Collection is similar to the slim C-shape found throughout the D’Angelico line, but with more thickness in the shoulder to allow for snug hand fit as well as extra sustain. Medium Jumbo fret wire and a 12-inch fingerboard radius allow for quick navigation of the fingerboard while also prioritizing comfort for both rhythm and lead playing.
In 2020, Supro and D’Angelico became part of the same family of brands under Bond Audio. At that time, EVP of Product Ryan Kershaw and CTO Dave Koltai began designing custom pickups under the Supro name for the Tour Collection project.
“Supro Bolt Bucker pickups were designed to offer the tone of the most sought-after vintage "PAF" pickups from the late 1950's. Scatter wound, just like the originals, Supro Bolt Buckers utilize 42-gauge enamel wire along with a mixture of Alnico II (neck) and Alnico V (bridge) magnets to provide the perfect balance of warmth and clarity with unrivaled articulation and note bloom.” - Dave Koltai, Chief Technology Officer at Bond Audio.
Introducing the Excel Series Tour Collection | D'Angelico Guitars
All models are available for pre-order and will be in stock this holiday season. US MAP $1499. For more information, please visit dangelicoguitars.com.
The Cream Amp is a handmade low-gain overdrive pedal based on the Electra Distortion circuit.
The Cream Amp was designed to deliver full dynamics amp-like dirt to your clean and crunch amp or to another pedal in the chain without altering your tone too much. To add some grit at low volume or to make your amp sound more full, use the Drive control to set the gain and the Level control to match with your amp.
- Two knobs to control Volume and Drive
- Shielded inputs/outputs to avoid RF
- Filtered and protected 9VDC input
- Daisy-chain friendly
- Current draw: 7.5mA
The Cream Amp pedal is hand-made in Barcelona with carefully selected components and has a price of 100.00€. The pedals are available and can be purchased directly from the Ananasheadonline store.
For more information, please visit ananashead.com.
The Red Sea was born out of the vision to provide complex signal routing options available to the live/performing musician, that up until now, are only found in a studio mixing environment.
Introducing the Red Sea, an all-analog signal routing matrix, designed for countless stereo and mono signal path routing options. The Red Sea was born out of the vision to provide complex signal routing options available to the live/performing musician, that up until now, are only found in a studio mixing environment. The Red Sea has accomplished this in a compact, easy-to-use, and cost-effective solution.
Wet | Dry | Wet
The Red Sea gives you the ability to run a FULL Stereo wet dry wet rig using only 2 amps or just 2 signals to the FOH, while also giving you complete control over your Wet & Dry mix! Use the Blend knob to control the overall mix between stereo wet effects and mono dry/drive signals.
Stereo Dual Amps
Run dual amp modelers if full stereo w/ stereo effects. Gone are the traditional ways of one amp in the Left channel and another in the Right channel. Now use the Red Sea to seamlessly blend between two separate amps in true stereo. Think of this as a 2-channel amp where you can blend anywhere between both amps.
Stereo Parallel FX
Red Sea has two independent stereo FX loops. Use each FX loop to run stereo delay's and reverb's in parallel, where each effect does not interact with each other. Huge soundscapes can be achieved with washy reverbs and articulate delay repeats while being able to blend between each FX loops mix level.
The Red Sea can also do the following routing options:
- Wet | Dry utilizing a single amp
- Clean Wet | Dry | Wet (drives DO NOT run into wet effects)
- Wet | Dry | Wet with dual delays (one in the L channel & other in R channel)
- Parallel Dual Amps (run dual amp modelers in FULL stereo)
- Convert a tube amp's serial FX Loop to a parallel FX Loop
- Stereo and Mono analog dry through (avoid latency in digital pedals)
Features:
Stardust V3 was designed to capture the sound and response of 3 distinct amplifier models.
Stardust V3 was designed to capture the sound and response of 3 distinct maxed-out amplifier models. An all-analog signal path with discrete gain stages featuring MOSFET transistors provides juicy overdrive tones with great note separation that clean up to that sparkly sound that we all love and heard in recordings of the past. Set gain and tone and control everything from your guitar. Sparkly clean to crunchy mean are all there.
You can select the amplifier voicing via the onboard toggle switch.
BSM: Voiced after a blackface amp head that was primarily targeted for bass guitar players but got famous for electric guitar classic rock tones.
VLX: Voiced after a chimey 2x10” combo offering the perfect amount of controllable crunch
DLX: Voiced after one of the most popular low wattage 1×12″ combo amps that have found their way in countless recording studios and clubs around the world.
Stardust V3 now comes with top-mounted jacks and soft-click true bypass via a high-quality relay. The pedal has loads of output volume and enhanced headroom provided by 18V DC (boosted internally) so that it can also be used as a preamp going straight into your Power Amp or AudioInterface when combined with a separate speaker simulation device.
Street price: 199 Euro / 199 USD.
For more information, please visit crazytubecircuits.com.