Biyang DS-8 Mouse

Couldn't be simpler. You stand on it to turn it on - you stand on it to turn it off. There is "Volume", "Filter" and "Distortion" controls and a 3-way switch to control the circuits clipping mode.

AMAZING. This thing does EXACTLY what it sets out to do. That is, it's a ProCO Rat clone. (Hence the "Mouse" name...)

With the 3-way switch set to "Turbo" you get the most authentic Rat sound. Maybe even slightly better to my ear. A very warm sounding distortion. The guitar will effortlessly sing through this pedal. When combined with the Biyang OTD-100, you are in absolute overdrive heaven.

With solid steel casing and a true bypass switch, I will definately gig with this. Not a question. The only reason I won't give it a 10 right now is because I only just got it. I will change it to 10 in a week or so I'm sure.

Absolute pleasure to deal with.

I've played the real-deal ProCo Rat and, for this price, I will say there is no contest to these Biyang pedals. This pedal will easily compete with $200+ "boutique" pedals. I recommend you pick one up today before the price shoots up.

Analog stompbox, so no patch nor firmware junk here. wrt/ ease of use, well, it's a distortion pedal with volume, distortion and tone pots, and a 3-way selector for normal, more and even more distortion (well, it's labelled 'normal', 'max' and 'turbo'), so any dummy should be able to use it.

Err, what ? Manual ? What manual ? What for ?-)

The only "uncommon" feature here is the 3-way switch, and boy, it's not hard to figure what it does (yes : add a bit more gain and thickness). IOW, the only instruction you need is "set all pots to 12 o'clock, switch to 1st position, play, fiddle with distortion and tone pots and the switch until it sounds good to you, adjust the volume, then you're done".

Using it with:

* Vox Custom 24 (loaded with bareknuckles crawlers pups) / Vox Standard 25 (stock DiMarzio FS-1 pups... for now) guitars
* '83 Ibanez ts-09
* Fender Blues Junior

and well, apart from a little too much compression on the lows when maxing everything on both the box and the amp (which is not a very sensible thing to do anyway), well, I have to say: it sounds just good. Pretty good, in fact...

With the dist pot at 8 o'clock, it's almost transparent. From 8 to about 10 o'clock, it make a pretty good overdrive, almost a TS-09 clone (with 8 o'clock on the ds8 = min drive on the ts-09 and a bit under 10 o'clock = max drive on the ts-09). Seriously, I'm not sure I could tell one from the other in a blind test, and I've been using this ts-09 for more than 15 years now.

Now above 10 o'clock things start getting serious: from a beautiful, singing, a bit creamy but still focused - and never harsh - distortion with lots of bite and sustain, to an about-to-die cranked-up-all-the-way tube amp.

Under 1 or 2 o'clock it's perfect for heavy rock / 70's hard rock big riffs, above it starts being a bit on the lead-work-only side but do it preety well. Works well with both single coils and humbuckers, and while not totaly transparant (but hey, that's not what you'd expect for a distortion neither) it's mostly faithfull to the guitar's sound.

Also works well after the ts-09 - my favorite settings so far being :

* ts-09 : drive 9 o'clock, tone 12 o'clock, level 2 o'clock
* ds-8 : volume 2 o'clock, tone 11 o'clock, distortion 2 o'clock, swicth in middle pos.
* Blues Jr: volume between 7 and 8, eq and master to uour tastes !-)

This way I can go from light crunch (no pedal) to heavier crunch (ts-09) to serious overdrive/light distortion (ds8 only) to heavy lead distortion, plus all the nuances from playing with the vol and tone pots from the guitar.

Ok, it's a bit noisy with distortion above 12 o'clock, but hey, I've never heard a dist that wasn't, and it's not worse than any other I've tried.

Can't tell about reliability so far - only bought it yesterday - but it seems pretty solid, so I'm not specially worried it could break anytime soon.

no opinion.

I'm playing blues, classic rock, early hard-rock and old-school punk-rock - started with punk-rock about 79 (was 12 by the time). I've been using quite a lot of OD / dist / fuzz pedals and played a lot amps too, and never really be happy with my sound - so far. The Blues Jr / ts-09 / ds8 combo seems to be what I was looking for.

I had already settled on the Blues Jr which sounds just great from pristine clean to heavy overdrive (instant love affair - too bad I never gave this amp a try before), and I already knew it was going to play well with the ts-09, so I just needed a true distortion for lead work. I tried three other way more expensive pedals before (namely: an OCD fulltone - great OD but not really a distortion, too sharp for my needs here -, a Way Huge Fat Sandwich - nice but coloured and compressed the sound too much IMHO, and a Vox cooltron BullDog - nice for british brown sound, but still not was I was looking for), and gave this one a try only because the shop owner insisted. Thank this guy, he made my day !-)

I'd definitively go buy another one if it was broken or stolen - FWIW, I think I'll by a second one anyway just to make sure.

To make a long story short : it's certainly not "the best" distortion box out there (

Very intuitive product. Nothing new to a distortion pedal. My only gripe is that there is a volume jump between the different available voicings. does make usability in a live setting somewhat more difficult since volume differences have to be compensated for. but at these prices why not just get two pedals.

I was blown away by the sound of this pedal. I can get so many unique and very usable sounds out of this pedal. I absolutely love it and it is quickly becoming my sound. The distortion can vary from smooth, to chain-saw.

I am running it through a Fender Hot ROd Deluxe.

so in diode clipping mode you can get very transparent sounding tone. great for cleaner passages. and the asymmetrical clipping is heavier. I like using for covering stuff like white stripes. Overall just a great bluesy pedal that can rip when turned up.

I found the first channel to be a bit plain. nothing really outstanding about it. I never use it.

cannot tell yet only had it for a couple of months. although it seems to be constructed very well so I guess only time will tell.

no opinion

IF you are in a cover band this pedal could be invaluable. If you are in a indie rock band, or perhaps a blues rock band this could be your secret weapon to great tone.

I am considering downsizing my pedalboard based off of having this pedal alone. it can do the job of what normally took many pedals. for something like metal I don't think it will give the desired results. just not that type of distortion.