Ibanez DS10 Distortion Charger

easy to use, my suggestion is play with it at practice volume to see where it could work within your realm.... or tonal spectrum. It may take a little time to see how the enhance knob effects what you're trying to do, also depdning on which output you use, it offers up some variety. I have not used it in stereo or both outputs, mostly because I am lazy.

I think it sounds great. I play more of a bluesy style, not too dirty at all. I have a few tube screamers an old sd9 and some other odd ball overdrives from years passed. This pedal always finds it's way back onto my board.
The tone controls offer a wide variety of eq possibilities, though it can be a bit noisy with certain guitars that are not sheilded well.
It reminds me of my mxr distortion II that I stupidly broke....

I've never had a problem with it, though I don;t remember when I bought it, it's been so long.
Nowadays I keep all of my pedals velcro'd down onto a pedal board for convenience and ease of setup. It used to be my pedals would get bached around, leaving them battered and chipped, saying that I haven;t had any problem with my old habits of pedal treatment.

I have tried to contact hoshino many times regading manuals and other technical questions and have never heard from them.

My overall popinion of the DS10 is that I respect it. I respect it for it's versatility, it's feel when you are playing ie feedback... and hey, my ds10 has been beaten up and is still going strong.
It was a typical Ibanez weirdo green color, and now it's has some weirdo green paint on it but most of it has worn off or chipped off... it looks better now.

Mostly simple, with a distortion knob, level knob, low and high EQ, and a mysterious thing called "enhance" that apparently does interesting things when running in stereo. I tried it once through a pair of Fender amps, and didn't notice a durn thing, but that could well be me and my gear. Regardless of the Enhance knob, ALL knobs on this rascal require a bit of tweaking; the standard "12 o'clock" setting is a bit on the thin side.

To preface, my rig and music is mostly of the 60's retro style, I use all kinds of Fender amps, from Vibro-Champs to a Twin Reverb, plus lots of other, odder amps (Supros, Gibsons, Silvertones) for studio recording. My main guitar is a Yamaha SG-2, which is pretty much a Fender Jaguar with an Asian accent.

To say this pedal is a fish out of water in my usual rig is putting it mildly. The Distortion Charger pretty much screams "1985" in terms of sound and looks. I know there are people on this site touting it as the be-all-end-all metal distortion, but there are plenty of other gizmos (Boss's Metal Zone, DOD's Super American Metal), that'll kick its' little vomit green butt. An uber shredder it ain't. The DS10 is more of a medium gain distortion with a little midrange scoop; perfect for lighter 80's pop solos. A buddy of mine tried it out, and hit the nail on the head: "It's the anti-Tube Screamer!" he said.

Like a Tube Screamer, this pedal is weak in the low-end category; you've got to goose the bass up past three o'clock and cut the treble a bunch to get anything beyond frying bacon thin. The pedal is also on the noisy side, with plenty of hiss to spare. And don't even THINK of running this pedal with another distortion, unless you've got a hefty noise gate in the chain-it'll put out so much white noise you'll think you're in an arena full cheering fans. Okay, maybe that could be a good thing...

Now, having said all that, I recently had to record an 80's retro-type number, and I used this booger with a Digitech Whammy set to the root/fifth setting to ape an "Owner of a Lonely Heart" sound ala' Yes. It NAILED it!

I dunno. The 10 series pedals have a bad rap for busting their switches, and this one gets a little cantakerous every now and then, although I feel it's more from lack of use than anything else. Still, it's been said that if you break the switch on these boxes, they can't be fixed, so that's a downer. On the other hand, an unloved pedal like this one can be found for around 40 bucks, so if you DO kill it, it's easy to get another one from somewhere. Mixed feelings all around here.

Never dealt with the Fuji folk. Have a lot of their pedals, though.

This pedal was given to me eons ago; it had been passed around from player to player like the proverbial Xmas fruitcake, unloved and unused. It has taken me a long time to appreciate any redeeming qualities this booger has, but I've finally come around to see there are some, by golly. For me, this is like a 60's fuzz pedal; it's not a do-everything kinda' distortion, but a specialist, ideal for aping a certain sound of a certain era--in this case, late 80's pop. It will never get regular use in my usual rig, but for them rare times when I gots to pretend I'm wearing a mullet and parachute pants, it's here to help.

Very Easy

Sounds great especially when mixed with reverb and chorus

excellent

never had a problem

My overall rating of this pedal would be very very good. I got this pedal brand new for my 13th birthday and I am 35 now. It has served its purpose for that many years through band after band and I just recently retired it at the end of March 2007. I bought a BOSS MT-2 Metal Zone and for those of you that think the Ibanez DS10 Distortion Charger pedal is the be all and end all of metal distortion I have news for you lol. The MT2 Metal Zone is by far the heaviest and best sounding pedal on the market! A must have for any metal player. I am still planning to use the DS10 though for the secondary output for eq controls this is where these 2 pedals differ and wish the MT2 had this feature.

except for the enhance knob, controls are obvious. what the manual says about it: "basically, what happens here, is that high frequency signals are sampled, phaseshifted, and remixed into the output". the ds10 is maybe a little packed with knobs, but still okay to twiddle...

since before i only had a very crappy distortion effect (monarch mdi-1),
i am loving the sound of the ds10. i'm using it with my roland tb-303.
with the distortion level on 2/3, bass pumped up and the high level enhanced, it's barking at you in hardcore acid style. the sound of the enhancement section is subtle yet great and adds a lot of character to the signal. the ds10 gets really noisy when turning the distortion control all the way up, but i don't need too much distortion anyway - it sounds best on lower settings.

plastic pots, metal casing. i think it's solid, though i don't stomp on it...

a great box, for the eq and the enhancement section. the design is very very 80s, love it or hate it... i always find it hard to make friends with ugly looking equipment, but i think the ds10 has a certain coolness to it.

Very easy to use. Adjust the distlevel 6 tone controls, set the level, then GO!

I?ve just got it. Tested it whith my CIJ strat, and it sound awesome thru my Engl Jive. Gain and bass at full, roll of the treble,set the enhance to 3-4. Its just a killer sound. I dont think I will use the od channel in my amp after this ;-). Lower gainlevels work well to, not as smooth as a TS-9, but the highgain sound makes up for that.

As I sad, I?ve just got it. But like the rest of the 10-series i think it will continue to be troublefree..

I dunno, I?ve not needed support yet...

Wellbuild pedal, with very nice sound. It rocks.

This pedal is so awesome sounding! not the most extreme distortion on the planet, but it works well with my ibanez roadstar II (Tuned to B) and it works well with my other guitars too. controls are easy to use, and it took about 15 minutes to get aceptable sounds for humbuckers and single coils. high knob can get a bit shrill (I leave it off, to 9:00. to compensate for loss of treble I use the enhance knob for bite i set it at 9:00 to 12 noon.

Setup is: Ibanez roadstarII 410 (or gax70),ibanez DS10, boss MT2, Boss BF2 Flange, Boss DD3 delay, into fender automatic 90 watt amp.
this distortion is killer! crank the dist to 8 or below to get tubescreamer tones, turning the dist knob past8 and the distortion just rips! i use it primarily as my "B" tunings main distortion. i actualy prefer this dist to the boss ds1, but i'm also going to get a DS1 as a backup to this dist, but i'll also have to buy a GE7 EQ to get the sound i'm looking for out of the DS1.

I just got this pedal and it looks like it's survived for about 20 years or so. but i would like to get one as backup if i can find one.

This unit is quite easy to get good moderate crunchy overdrive sounds. Having a bass and treble control allows you to compensate for the typical loss of bass that comes with a tube screamer. This unit has the same TI chip as the tube screamer.

I am running a number of guitars (Ibanez Artist, Strat, Tele) into my board and then into a peavey classic 30 with 2-12 cab. My chain goes: Boss TU-2, Boss DS-1, Ibanez DS10, DOD Ice Box chorus, Ibanez DE-7(on the analog echo setting). Through the clean channel cranked about 1/2 way, I can get the range of clean, moderate gain (DS10) and heavier gain (DS-1). For a more over the top sound I'll use the distortion channel of the classic 30. I have had this pedal for two years and am still amazed at how good it sounds. I have had the fortune to compare this to a Fulltone FullDrive, TS808, a TS9, a Hot Cake and a Keeley Modded DS-1, all great sounding pedals, I still like the sounds I get from my DS10. It just has a richer, smoother sound with full bass.

People talk about the switch going out on the Ibanez 10-series pedals, but I have had no problems with this one. I do, every 3-4 months spray the switch with contact cleaner(radio shack). I do this to all my pedals. I have the DS-1 as a backup and for a slightly more aggressive sound.

I have been playing for nearly 30 years, and I play bass most of the time now. The other guitarist in our band has been using my pedal board and his own Peavey Classic 30 and loves this pedal as well. We are playing 60's 70's 80's and 90's stuff from CCR to AC/DC to Fountians of Wayne. This set-up can cover it all. If we ever need anything heavier, we have a peavey Bravo(a pawnshop steal at $100) with a Vintage 30 that sounds better than most of the JCM 800's I have heard. If this pedal were stolen, I would look for another one of e-bay and most likely send my DS-1 to Keeley for the SEM mod. I might also look for a Vox Valve tone or a Guyatone OD-2.

Since mine was used, I had no manual. The controls were reasonably easy to figure out even without a manual, though some of them only after testing and deduction.

Guitar: Kramer, amp: Marshall solidstate combo.
Powered by a battery, the unit was almost noiseless. However, with a power adapter, the pedal produced an untolerable hum.

I didn't like the distortion of this unit. To be frank, I hated its guts. It had bite, sure, but it lacked depth and tone. I tweaked the settings as much as I could, but could not get a passable rhythm guitar tone; for leads it was even worse.

To my ears, this pedal will make your guitar sound WORSE.

About the only usable distortion I could get from this pedal was a very dirty thrash distortion (like something you hear on SOD's "Speak English or Die"). Unfortunately I was not into that kind of music so this pedal did nothing for me.

When the battery connector broke, I was marooned with the damnably noisy power adapter.

I had this pedal in 1987-1989. A friend gave it to me for free because he did not like it.

Despite the number of knobs, this is a very limited pedal. The main problem is the distortion it produces: it is a very gray and uninspiring distortion. An artificial, "dead" distortion.

This is the only pedal that I have had that I have never missed.

Easy enough to get a good sound out of. 5 knobs, (dist, level, low, high and enhance)tone controls can be tricky, and it does take some tweaking on the treble depending on if you use humbuckers or single coil pickups.

I use a '66 blackface super reverb, '98 Naylor super club 38 and a Yamaha DG80. Guitars are a stock '63 strat and a mexican Tele. I have alot of pedals, including an original TS808 and a TS9 modded to 808 specs. This pedal DOES have the JRC4558 chip! Because of that, you can get very close to a TS9/808 sound, but not quite as smooth. But, for what it lacks in the smoothness department, it makes up for in the GAIN department. Not a Metal Zone, but with humbuckers you can get a decent Van Halen type of tone. For the price I paid, $40.00, you can't beat the bang for the buck. The high end, like I said earlier, does need to be attenuated (almost off) to get a good tone. I'm sure if you are a tech head, you could rectify this with a slight mod. It could stand a littl more low end as well, but I am splitting hairs at this point. Can be a bit noisey at high gain levels, but that's expected anyway. Can be used in a pinch as a backup to a TS9 or 808. I find it sounds exceptionally good through the Yamaha DG80. In fact, I prefer the tone of the DS10 to the distortion tone of the actual amp! I have also had an SD9 Sonic distortion, and the DS10 is far superior tonally, and is much more flexible. In fact, I sold the SD9 and bought a second DS10 for $35!

As dependable as any other "10" series pedal. Switch will stick occasionally, but I use it mostly at home at practice volumes. I would not use it as a primary distortion, but to supplement my tone arsenal. Use as a backup to a TS808 or TS9.

N/A. Never dealt with Ibanez

I play mostly blues/ rock (SRV, Hendrix, Robben Ford). Been playing 20 years. I also own a TS808, TS9, Ibanez Mostortion, Boss SD1, Boss OD1, and a Klon Centaur. This pedal is great if you are a tone junky, or just looking for a TS9/808 pedal on a budget. Not the most sophisticated pedal in the world, but can get the job done, and is very flexible. Goes from ts808 range to jcm800 type gain. Not too shabby.

5 knobs, one button to boot. Tweak and go!
2 outputs: A= standard, B= always enhanced, even with dist off.
So you can hook up 2 amps, after the box.

Somwhere between overdrive and dist. Lots of guts and sustain. Adds no noise to my setup. (single coil->tube amp).
Works perfect in conjuction with guitar's volpot and string-attack.
Goes from nearly clean to not clean at all, with a good guitar.

Use it as distsource to clean channel, or kickdown for drive channel.
Works fine either way. Hendrix/SRV 'round the corner!?

The treble settings is important in getting the tone You want

It is important that You test it with YOUR amp.
I tried for fun to switch between the 8 different amptypes in my Yamaha DG60 amp, with the DS-10 on. Got everything from wonderful to awful.
No wonder the same pedal gets different review-ratings.

I think this is an early 80:s pedal.
Still kickin'.

Dont know.

I play blues and bluesrock, since the -70's and this pedal is perfect for that. Fits my Laney LC50-II (Rock 'n roll in a box) like a glove.

Also have DG-stomp, DG 60-fx, H/K TubemanII (great box!), TC sustainer and TC booster/dist etc. The DS-10 does not need to feel inferior to them.

If You want metal, I cant' guarentee You will be happy with this.
But for blues etc, buy it!