Boss DS-1 Distortion

Plug in the AC adapter. Plug something into the input. Run a cable from the output to an amp or into the mix. Depress the pedal. Toggle around the knobs until you get what you desire. That's how easy it is to operate. I didn't need a manual.

I can get some nasty sounds out of this pedal. However, I don't own a guitar. I use this pedal for distorting vocals and synthesizers, and it gets the job done nicely. If I toggle everything just right, I can sound like Bill Leeb from Front Line Assembly, and that makes me very happy.
It can get noisy if you crank the distortion all the way up and the tone all the way up. The tone is a type of low pass/ high pass filter mixed with an equalizer. The lower the tone is, fewer high frequencies are let through and low frequencies pass (dark), and the higher the tone is, the less low frequencies are allowed through and high frequencies pass (bright). The higher the distortion is set, the more noise is created by increasing the tone.
Sometimes I feel like the pedal subtracts the fullness of sounds I run though it and makes them thinner than they were originally. But, it depends on the specific sound I'm running though and the pedal's settings.

This thing was designed for an elephant and can take any kind of ass stomping you try to deliver. I punch it to distort my vocals live and it hasn't died yet. And I bought it used.

Never talked to them, can't have an opinion.

I play industrial music and this pedal is essential for my live effected vocals.
If you're looking for a distortion pedal and you're short on cash and can't afford the higher grade ones like the Black 13 (which sounds ungodly awesome), get this. It's $40 new. It will survive anything you put it through except perhaps spilled liquids and molten lava. Beware this pedal making your signal sound thinner, though. The sound lies entirely in the knobs.
If it were lost or stolen, I would get a new one, or maybe upgrade to one of the newer DS's to get a gruffer sound.
I love the fact it can take a beating. It's made mostly out of metal, not plastic, which I like. All pedals should be built as sturdy as this. Just don't use it when you're drunk, the knobs might break off if you miss. Even if they don't, drunk people don't play as well as sober people do anyways.

Three knobs - how much easier can it get?

The stock pedal sounds like garbage. My Jackson strat clone sounds absolutely nasty. My les paul sounds a little better, fatter, but still harsh and shrill, nothing like a les paul. DS1 kills all your bass. Increasing tone makes it sound like a weak thin tin can. It has a raspy tinny metallic tone which I can't stand.

I modded mine and it sounds a lot better. This pedal does have potential, but I really wonder why boss released something like this. It must be modded before playing, otherwise you will give up guitar.

Rock solid, for the past 10 years.

Never needed

It's an ok pedal if you're experimenting with mods. I won't buy this to actually play on stage. There are a lot of better sounding distortion and od pedals around, even at a much cheaper price, eg the behringer od/dist, ibanez etc.

Pretty simple.

Unmoddified this gets about a 5. After I put a monte allums rectifier, cmat, tri-gain kit in it it now gets a 9 as far as pedals go . Way loud now also.

If you can use a soldering iron and install a mod , this pedal goes from average to awesome . If your into the sound of a amp barely starting to break up , no pedal will match a good tube amp . Pedals seem to be best when you need more than a little break up. Would I buy it again ? Its good value even without the mod.

Easy as pie, three simple controls and you don't even need the manual.

I had a very early Taiwan made DS-1 god knows how many years ago. I was a student and that was all I could afford, with my squier strat, a simple one guitar one pedal setup.

After I started working and could afford to experiment with other pedals, every single dirt pedal I used sounded better than the ds-1. Mind you I still have my first ds-1, all battered bruised and ugly looking, for sentimental reasons. I bought it out of hard saved pocket money, and quite a few missed lunches.

The ds-1 somehow sucks away the guitar's native tone and character, and introduces a sterile buzzy fizzy distortion, which on a single coil pickup sounds really nasty. Humbuckers do a tad better but still sounds nasty. My les paul doesn't like this pedal, and comes out sounding like a drunk tramp playing a distorted violin with his teeth.

Not noisy per se, in that it doesn't introduce unwanted noise unless the gain is cranked all the way up, but then again which dirt pedal doesn't behave that way?

The tone control is really silly. If it's up beyond 9:30-10:00 position, it literally sucks away and kills all your bass, making your axe sound like an ice pick scratching a blackboard.

Sort of reliable. Mine crapped out two years back and the in/out sockets needed to be replaced. I thought they were metal, but they're all plastic inside. The second time, the sockets were ok but there was a wiring problem. I guess after all these years, one of the wires got cut off at the solder point, and all it needed was resoldering.

Boss pedals are not nearly as infallible as people make them out to be, so never gig without a backup, I've learnt that the hard way many years ago, and had to use the amp's distortion which sounded terrible.

Never needed. My pedal started conking out waaaaaaay after warranty expry.

I really don't know why they have to keep producing the same pedal year after year, when there are far more modern designs and better designs which don't kill the lows, and eat up your guitar's tone. Even the simple SD-1 and BD-2 are miles ahead of the DS-1 in terms of sheer character and tone.

I only keep my DS-1 for sentimental reasons, and never use it. It looks like a war relic and is an interesting conversation piece.

Three controls, as simple as it gets? Not until you see how weirdly the tone knob behaves.

This was my 1st dist stomp box, till I heard the blues driver and sd1 overdrives. I used it with a cheap Jackson strat copy, and later a Tokai with P90's. It sounds like rusty fizz with either. My ampli is a second hand Fender 1968 deluxe reverb which is a lovely amp but this pedal makes it sound like a small transistor radio. I heard abt mods to pedals but I rather pay a little more and get a great pedal out of the box. I dont like messin around with the pedal guts and innards.

My guitar is not the best but it has a nice balanced tone but when I stopmed on this box all the base vanished and all I got was fizzy treble and harsh mids.

Absolutely no clue. It feels solid and looks solid but I dumped mine after a month. Maybe it woulda lasted maybe not. I dunno.

No idea dudes. I dumped my pedal.

This pedal is for making a lot of noise. There aint nothin subtle about this dirt bag. Something like sex pistols or ramones I guess, get a dirty loud guitar, put it thru this pedal and sound dirtier and louder but totally lacking any beauty. It can be used for a very limited range of music mostly for rhythm. I play any lead solo thru this pedal it sounds like a wailing tin can, oh my god help me kil myself that's what I feel.

Easy to use with only 3 knobs but not so easy to get a great tone. The tone ctrl knob does weird sh*t to your tone.

I play at home with small(er) practice amps. I use a Fender MIA tele through my effects to a Marshall MG15MSII Micro Stack at home. For gigs, we use a larger louder Marshall which sounds a lot better.

The ds-1 really kills the lows specially if you have the tone knob beyond 10 o'clock. You can test this my playing some muted chords and listening to the "chunk" sound with and without the ds-1 engaged. With the ds-1 on, there's really no depth and lows, quite a bit of nasty fizzy mids and highs.

When I play the ds-1 into the 50 watt or 100 watt stage amps, it sounds a bit better, but there are other dirt pedals which sound a LOT better than the ds-1. The metal zone when set to low gain sounds a lot richer and with more harmonic content. I also use a naxon overdrive which sounds a lot smoother and richer than the ds-1.

It may be good for some older AD/DC rhythm, some ZZ-top rhythm and the likes, but I simply cannot solo through this pedal, it sounds truly nasty and farty.

It was reliable for a while. I bought mine used, a year ago and used it for 9 months before I sold it. There was a weird problem with it. I would get sound when the unit is bypassed, and an intermittent nothing when switched on. I really dont know much about the electronics, but I guess they used cheap parts from god knows which country, but I can make a guess. I believe this is not an uncommon problem with boss pedals.

Dunno, I bought it second hand.

Nope, this ain't for me. I got an SD-1 and an electro harmonix overdrive which sound far better than this ______. I don't know how people still sing its praises, maybe it was a great pedal in the 80's but with all the choice and tones available today, you'd be hard pressed to find something that sounds worse.

If it were stolen, I'd thank the thief. Anything I wish it had? Hell yeah, I wish it had something, even a little itsy bitsy something that made it sound the remotest bit musical rather than sound like a paper shredder being fed CD's.

Well there are only 3 knobs and the place where the batery goes is easy to open

I dont like it it would be great if yo want to get a old radio sound but i dont like it

I will dont us it at stage or studio because i dont like it i will probably i use for warm up my hands after the show.

I buy it on Ebay and here in Peru there isn??t any costumer support

I play metal and rock like Santana but this pedal is for punk.

It is important to remember that this pedal was designed when amps were just amps with no bells & whistles or channel switching!
To get good use out of the DS-1 you must use it into a clean tube amp with the bright switch off! It's like a treble booster with gain. Into a bright overdriven amp it'll sound like crap... you can crunch an old twin and make it sound like a Marhall with nthis pedal. Very dynamic.

Use it with a CLEAN tube Amp!

Joe Satriani uses it in the clean channel of his peavey tube amp.

Ostensibly easy insofar as there's only three knobs, but as another reviewer below astutely noted, there is no good sound to be had out of this pedal, and the least-bad sound takes a fair bit of fiddling to achieve

The tone must be kept below 10 o'clock or it'll sound head-searingly bright in a harsh, grating way. Keep the gain lower than 10 too if you want anything approaching clarity. This pedal sounds cold, clinical & never far from harsh at any setting, even if used as a boost with the gain on 0.
It sounds passable in a cheesy 80's Dokkeny cock rock way, if used via a tube Marshall with a compressor before it & a sprig of reverb. With a Marshall it can also do a convincing 80s speedcore sound ?? la Bad Brains. Through any kind of bright-voiced amp eg Fender, it sounds indescribably awful for anything.
I have a 70s MXR distortion + that does something similar but with way more warmth & better definition (a lot less volume though. Damn, is it too much to ask that someone might get it ALL right??)

Definitely reliable. The most expensive feature of Boss pedals are the tough casing. The actual interior components I'm sure are bottom of the barrel.

Never dealt with Roland. I've been reliably informed that they're....unaccomodating.

This was my first distortion pedal, given to me by my parents for Christmas 1989. It was a Japanese one that I used for a few years til it was stolen. Recently I bought another one in a moment of nostalgic sentimentality (these moments are dangerous), but I really found I had no use for it. It sounded just as I remembered the old one sounding, but it was my ears that had done the evolving! Boss currently do ONE good pedal: the OD-3 overdrive. Get that one if you use a tube amp. It has way more bottom end, warmth, guts, balls & transparency than the DS-1 & more than enough gain on tap (if not, you need to practise!)
The DS-1 deserves credit for being there first even if the party's a lame one, but really in today's market there is infinitely more choice than 27 years ago. Much better distortion units can be had for not much more. It's worth going the extra yard.
Thank you ver'much

Very easy to use as it only has three knobs. The instructions are not really needed.

The sound quality is good if you play punk for instance. I got my Ds1 modified by a company called Pedaldoc and it sounds much better now. I like Hendrix sound and it gets pretty close now.

This is not a pedal it is a tank. No way your are going to break it even if you throw it out of the windon of a 20th floor.

I have never met anybody who had to contact Boss because one of his pedals had broken down. As stated above this think is a really really sturdy.

Good enough sound but much better after being modified. I believe there are lots of companies modifying the Ds1 now so google it and see what you can find.