You're Using Your Boss DS-1 All Wrong! [No Really, You Are]

daniel i had a boss ds1 once it was awful well michael i think you need to rethink the thinking part of your thinking [Music] hey so [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] wow what was that peeking at didn't even look do we know wow hey everyone welcome to that pedal show dan here mick here hello genuinely the first time we've heard that we we've done all the pre-show um level testing with only one amp so we turned them both on that was the first time we'd been blessed with uh both amps so good so good that was killer quickens the blood michael quickens the blood it does it does um some housekeeping first of all uh thank you so much for joining us uh please subscribe if you haven't already subscribed and a massive thank you to anyone that's gone to thatpedalshowstore.com and grabbed some t-shirts we have some new t-shirts in we do we've got a a there's a fly flying beast as well that wants to buy t-shirts from thatpedalshowstore.com we've got new colorways and fuzz we've got a new orange thing with knobs on with knobs with knobs um so please yeah that pedal show store please go there it's how we found the show and we're very grateful for anyone who buys stuff thank you let's jump in i saw something on the interweb where boss had sold one and a half million ds1 pedals and i'm like hang on what so i looked it up crybaby sold a million the metal zone has sold a million theorists want to sell one and a half million right and it's completely blown my mind now we haven't we haven't turned a ds1 on for years and so i wanted to have a look at it and look at a little bit of the history of it why it has become such a you know successful and appealing family recordings and favored by so many artists yeah um so i want to have a look at that get to grips with the sounds of it compare it to uh the rat which was also very popular around the same time um and some different amps yeah here into two classic amps because as as you will know if you're a regular viewer of tps um the same pedal can sound radically different into two different amps so we've got two very different amps for that exact purpose i wish that fly would go and have a happy life somewhere else it's gonna annoy you no no no no it's gonna have a happy life somewhere else it did actually land on one of us didn't it in a video once did it yeah we're on a farm so flies are part of the uh part of the game i'm afraid on the farm um yeah so massively successful much loved and yet somewhat ignored since the pedal revolution spat out 58 bazillion different distortion pedals yep yep totally um be good if we had a time machine done be good and we could go back to what year 1978 it's almost unimaginable the the bell bottoms the the amount of um i made some notes recreational activities so boss released this in 78 and it was their second compact pedal it was so they had the first three compact pedals they released yeah they had the phaser the spectrum and the uh sorry their second compact distortion or overdrive is what i mean yes exactly that yeah um so i made notes oh great yeah yeah but i just wanted to get this right because i've been fascinated with designers and engineers lately right now now boss can't tell us exactly who designed the ds1 but kanju kudo and yasuyuki yamada were two engineers working at the time and they definitely at least had a big hand in it if they didn't do everything now um we were very fortunate enough a few years ago to head to japan and go and meet a bunch of the guys at boss and there's you know some of the engineers certainly one engineer from 1980 is still working there um and well yoshi top man yoshi was yeah the top man was uh putting together spacex yeah so they've um they've got a history of their you know their designers um you know staying on because they do such great work and they're all so passionate about it yeah fascinating so 1978. i want to hit you some facts about 1917. what was going on in 1978 well here are some albums uh and records singles and albums that were out in 78. uh take a chance on me by abba jazz just i just think of alan partridge ticker chance isn't it mulligan tyre okay paul mccartney yeah uh some of the nice wings the band of bidders could have been oh i'm sorry it was wings yeah um uh summer nights the year 78 was really all about the film greece man i heard that on the radio the other day check that out yeah right all recorded live those guys are as tight as a very very tight thing archer mr timmons andy timmons played for olivia newton john for years didn't he he was her musical director here we are tangenting already yeah um but it wasn't all bad news um rumors okay uh fleetwood mac uh van halen of course live and dangerous by thin lizzy hemispheres by rush and dire straits dice straits so i always think when we're saying you know this pedal came out in 1978 it's always worth a quick look at what was happening uh mazda rx-7 debuted ah the rotary engine the the uh the saab um the wankel uh rotary edge which makes me enough uh the hisab 900 and lest we forget the citroen visa um all of which information came from wikipedia so if it's wrong blame you not me citroen vs not going to do much good now post brexit but anyway um so i i just think culturally it's super interesting the bands that you mentioned there like thin lizzy and van halen and stuff a really important thing to recognize about all those bands yep loud loud loud yeah and we hadn't i mean you go to a rock gig in 1978 you were expected to be pummeled against the back of the wall that was what was happening yep so when boss released this in 1978 it was designed to work with what was happening with you know with players at the time if you think of we're talking about a lot with fuzz right and how fuzz is a is a pedal that once you've reached a certain level of playing it's uh it was so dynamic and it's it's informed so much about the you know how sensitive you are and the volume controls and all that sort of stuff distortion's different distortion doesn't rely so heavily on it's an important uh comparison isn't it because again if you think contextually mxr distortion plus 74 yeah mid 70s mid 70s somewhere like that but really the predominant overdrive and distortion devices of the time up until that point were basically first boxes weren't they they were which as you say is quite a different thing than what we now understand as the modern distortion or overdrive pedal so what people were looking for something a bit more controlled you know they could have that you know they wanted their volume but they didn't want these unruly um [Music] you know obviously we love fuzz but they want something a bit tighter i don't know what would have been popular at that time still a lot of silver face fenders around yeah right okay um i don't know jc series amps all the stuff that your sort of normal average guitar player would be using sure may not be a crank marshall stack right so if you want to sound like scott gorham or eddie van halen or whoever it was at that time certainly for you know everyday people who wanted guitar sounds that's just not available sure bingo bingo yeah um okay uh well let's have a listen to it we're gonna a bunch of different guitars we'll start with we've got the one on the right that ds1 is from 1980 april 1980 and they went through a couple different design changes we'll get to that in a minute but let's just have a listen to a strat and the les paul going into start with the marshall i'm just trying to get my head around that pedal's 42 years old nearly yeah it's and same color as the uh as my next which is from last year yeah anyway i'll okay marshall first let's go with the marshall first okay we keep turning them on and off because they are a little bit overdrivey which means lots of background noise sure oh and just before we get going the marshall is attenuated by the minimum minimum amount it can be attenuated by right i can't see i'm getting glasses on [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Applause] [Music] [Applause] nothing does that mid-range like a cranked traditional marshall no let's turn this on then all right [Music] so [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so [Music] hey [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] hmm [Applause] [Music] mmm [Music] okay so immediately what strikes me with the strat i mean and with the les paul as well is it doesn't sound compressed you're still hearing front edge of the note and that was the big thing like when you look at the waveform of the of the ds1 it's meant to work with an amplifier yeah that's already got a bit of love going behind it so that it doesn't sound like you're still hearing the front edge of the note yeah and that's the thing that the s1 does so brilliantly it really it's funnily enough before we um hit go today i i put on a couple of uh tracks while we were setting up and certainly a couple from paul gilbert and i don't know if he uses the ds1 or has used the ds one or not very famous users include what vi ceriani um kurt cobain look up the ds1 on wikipedia and you'll you'll get the list but huge number of super famous people have used it over the years whether paul gilbert did it did or didn't i don't know but it's that edge yeah that edge of when when you can do precise picking it really does leap out doesn't it the edge of it totally and so we'll show you how that works so we're going to go now to the um to the deluxe i'm going to turn the deluxe down to start with yeah so we're going to use the exact same sound right not going to touch anything i'm going to hear that sound into a clean deluxe yeah what that sounds like we'll pick up some more guitars as we go um just one observation before we move on it's really interesting bearing in mind that conversation we had about fuzz before because there are elements of the bottom end that get a bit fuzzy well so interestingly the eq is sort of similar to a big muff right in that way okay um it's got a depending on what the tone control is it sort of scoops some of those mids out yeah um and you know put some love you know some i've got to stop playing love in the bottom end but it accentuates some of those frequencies the thing that's different though is that uh and we'll hear in a second is what's going on with the with the the upper frequency yeah the distortion i meant as much about the the clipping characteristic sure because it's hard absolutely yeah it's a hard clipper there's there's nothing super like soft and nice about it it's like edge edge edge yep let's get the deluxe on and we'll have a listen okay i'll turn it down to three and a half so i might have to do some i might have to do some uh knob twiddling down so um let us let us hear the deluxe [Music] all good nice deluxe reverb just to give you some context there here's how that would sound with the strat [Music] totally lacking in mid-range which the les paul puts back hopefully you'll hear that just play that sector [Music] right so you know black panel deluxe sound you know sort of mid-scoopy lovely without haven't touched the pedal right here's the same pedal that we had going into i'll do it while you're playing [Music] [Applause] [Music] huh [Music] me [Music] do [Music] do [Music] now of all the amazing guitar sounds we've had on the show that's not one of them it's a sound it's a sound it is a sound um but yeah it's a little underwhelming it seems to make the amp actually get quieter whereas when we kicked it on with the marshall everything's like fat and massive hello so what i'm going to do now i'm gonna turn the deluxe up don't touch anything else leave the pedal where it is and turn the deluxe up to about six and a half yeah now i always make this caveat about the uh deluxe reverb some of your deluxe reverbs it's currently on three and a half three and a half some of your deluxe reverbs will be almost approaching overdrive by this point some don't i don't know whether it's what's in v1 or whether it's a pot taper thing try not to focus too much on the numbers there is a point where all deluxes deluxe reverbs go from meh meh meh meh to overdriving and mid-rangey and really nice dan is going to uh in fact you play i'll turn it up and you'll hear where that happens [Music] so [Music] boom [Music] it's love baby is love i'm just going to take couple db out of the mic preamps oh man so good okay different beast isn't it different beast different beast and now [Music] [Applause] me [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] i think it's amazing that not just the different obviously how the pedal is working with limiting the amplifier but suddenly it sounds fat whereas before when you kicked it on it scented yeah closed down it's really really fascinating that really fascinating and certainly would explain why you know back to the top of the show why have we ignored the ds1 over the years the reason i've ignored it is like everybody else probably when certainly if you're of our basic generation we gen x's down is that what we are more or less when there weren't that many pedals around you probably went through all the ariane distortions that were available all the boss ones that were available and some of the mxr ones there weren't that many available yeah and i can i just think you remember doing what we just did because i used twins right and i never had them you know i'd had them on four-ish because that was a good head roomy place this sounds a bit rubbish and thin right don't like this at all right next yeah hence ending up with a tube screamer well tube screamer or an od3 or you know something like that okay right so very interesting uh if you think of yeah the deluxe when we first started was like you're really loud twins yeah yeah you set that on it's fizzy and harsh so the it's really designed to work with an app that's got something else going on a little bit you know yeah it's got to be going to something that's limiting and if it is going to someone that's limiting it can be magic it really is um yeah so i remember uh you know when i first started playing at 10 spirits and dave had this dave gregory had this unbelievable solo sound and i'm like what's going on there and he just and it was his old ds1 hey that's for dave and it's like going into uh the ef-86 channel of his matchless turned up yeah just heavenly so but the the reason that works is that when what we heard in the deluxe if it didn't do that if it didn't have that sharp edge that made it sound harsh and awful then it wouldn't work into the correct amp yeah you know which is why today when we look at distortion pedals like um [Music] you know the you go to the governor and all the uh variants thereof it has like built-in compression into it so it will work those pedals those amp they've got what they call happen to box type pedals will work into a cleaner amplifier yeah but that into a cranked amplifier i mean it just sounds magic okay i think what we should do let's so we have both amps on yeah and just set them up to a nice place we really do want to hear the difference between the old one and the new one yep and then some context with the rat yep uh yeah i'm i'm super interested that so that the new one that we're about you're about to hear i think i bought that from anderson's maybe last year yes we were going to do something back then never got around to it so it's been sat in a box so it is a you know 2020 i guess so there's 40 years between those two pedals that is astounding amazing astounding okay i'm gonna put this down because i'm not loving it [Music] [Applause] [Music] hmm [Music] [Applause] [Music] ah [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] uh [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] hey [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] i'm not going to disrespect this guitar anymore regular viewers of the show will know i don't know how to play these things but i just you know for this yeah of course it was good to hear it i also turned the volume down a bit um i'm about as rock as a tree i'm afraid so i did my best um interesting okay different bottom end response in both of them more bottom end in the old one right different mid-range yeah that one sounded uh for one of a better term fuzzier to me okay and the mid-range was in a different place in the new one right what were you hearing i think that extra bottom end stuff makes it feel a bit warmer yeah the old one i mean they're really close they are like surprisingly close considering closer than i thought how different those circuits are yeah because this is all modern surface mount tiny little tiny tiny little surface mount components yeah um you know the original one that's using a this is that's pre-op amp in the game stage it uses an old toshiba um preamp chip like an inline preamp chip yeah i mean we probably should have said that at the top interesting about the ds1 that it's got two gain stages correctly well you've got you've got the input napa buffer like you do on all boss pedals yeah then from there it goes into um after that initial buffer it goes into it's like a booster stage like a transistor booster stage and that's before it hits the clipping stage okay and the clipping stage in the original one's done with that preamp yeah um which then goes to two uh two back-to-back diodes uh after 94 that's when they stopped using the old preamp inline and then went to the op-amp okay interestingly enough that first um after we go to the first buffer stage before it hits the clipping stage it goes through that uh like a transistor booster stage and it boosts the signal at a huge amount um it's something like 30 plus db of gain right before it hits the the clipping stage yeah um that is that is kind of interesting because i definitely hear a you know once it's crazy loud like that be super interesting to hear the audio back it's so loud in here i don't know what i'm listening to but um there is a splutteriness to the overdrive especially on the low strings um i guess which comes out in that extra bottom end response and i wonder if the criticism of the ds1 over the years is as that it's got too much bottom end so one of the things that people love about these one is it's so easy to mod right so if you if it's too much bottom end if you'd rather have asymmetrical clipping if you'd rather have um more mids yeah there are really simple things that you could do with one circuit that one's easy to mod but that one's easier to mod that one not so much you can't you can't mod those at all yeah so but over the years you've had you know um analog man and keely and jhs and a bunch of other guys and girls do mods to their ds1 to be able to tweak them to get them to sound the way they want them to work with their rigs so that's you know you know a really cool thing about the old ones is that yeah you can mod them so if if you know your rig was the marshall and the particular guitar and you loved the way it felt but you thought that's a bit thick change your capacitive value yeah you know no problem to work out what that capacitor value is um yeah i think we should uh nod with appreciation at dan's 61 les paul les paul jr that is a really spectacular guitar and it just always sounds immense it does it does 20 years before the uh almost 20 years before the ds before our ds1 well another interesting thing though i mean i think to i'm not sure what the output because of the gem but they're not they're not really high output it's a gem junior so um i think a lot of the gem people are like oh no but it's a gem junior yeah if you want to check the specs but because of that uh booster transistor stage you need to be careful about hitting it with too much input yeah um it's just too much too much it's too much uh because then things can get a bit out of control yeah when it starts because it'll it'll amplify so much that you can go beyond the rails i was definitely i was feeling that certainly on the bottom strings on the gem there right you know it's like really lovely dying amp mush which i kind of like but you might not like if you like it a bit more together actually i thought the gem sounded pretty decent it sounds great yeah no i don't mean that as pejoratively against the guitar i mean it pejoratively against me i struggle to play those sorts of guitars but just you know i actually think you're a really good rock player this is your time i don't know anything i do i think it's great i only know blues notes i'm afraid um okay i think then let's um hear it in the context with the rat shall we yeah well i just one sorry one final thing on what we just did i did have at one point the distortion at zero one thing we talk about a lot one thing that we should talk about more with pedals is maybe this is a subject for a whole other show but that output control the volume the master volume control is a significant tone shaper as well absolutely absolutely and having the you know if you get your desired distortion level and then you view the master controller just how loud you want it it's not the whole story no because the tonality does change significantly when you really whack that master up it does and also depending on the design of the pedal sometimes when the master volume is sort of right at the end after any buffer stages then it'll change the output impedance as well and change everything again so you know it all depends on the one thing about the bus having the input and the output buffers is that consistency thing like we've talked about yeah you know so that's that's that's the one group like we talked about in the last step in this last episode um but no you're absolutely right uh understanding that you know the master volume will change things as well i think that might be an element of why if your experience with a pedal like this has been slightly negative it might be that you've got the master really low and the gain really high and you're just like whoa fizz city yeah actually if you reverse that relationship and just belt the amp with it so the amp gives in a bit you might have a slightly nicer time just as a as a suggestion indeed okay so what we'll do now we're going to want to turn the deluxe down again yeah just so that we can hear the difference between the ds1 and the rat but then we'll turn the deluxe back up oh goody yeah and then so that it's like it'll make a bit more sense that the ds1 where that sits if that makes sense okay back down to um just under four on the deluxe then [Music] okay nice nice give it just give it a whack for me a sec can you [Music] now let's listen to the rat [Music] [Music] so [Music] it's down [Music] oh [Music] so of course you hear that right and you go what's happening there exactly just prove to me that there isn't something wrong here can i just hear that into the marshall yes of course sorry bit of a tangent [Music] so [Music] [Music] hey [Music] that is totally mind-blowing if you if you didn't follow if you didn't follow hopefully i made it clear on screen what was happening but we turned the ds1 on into the fender and it just went and all the mid-range was gone and all the volume was gone and it just sounded fizzy and thin i mean it wasn't a nasty sound but it was just fizzy and thin and [Music] not very loud and into the marshall that was and it was that a complete absence of mid frequency or something yeah so i can't if we go to the marshall and everything's over driving really nicely pretty much across the board all the frequencies yeah if i try and boost that with all the mids that the rats got so if we think about the the frequency of the ds1 with that scoopiness going on when i push that into the marshall it gives me extra top end it gives me thick bottom end and it all sounds big if i if if what i'm trying to do is push that mid frequency into the marshall it's got nowhere to go if i then take away bottom end like with the rat it's just like all i'm trying to do is overdrive the mids more in that i'm not going to get any any level from it however if i then put the rat into a mid scoopy amplifier and bring those mids back up it's like oh wow there it is but even with the level control around it full on the ds1 it still wasn't giving the yeah deluxe any longer because they're not not they're not loud the this one isn't loud that's my fitness depending on which version you get some are louder than others but certainly the original ones when we know we're not crazy loud um so you know we if you heard that if you put the ds1 and the rat side by side into a clean fender amplifier no contest there's no contest right you're going to say right every day of the week let's now get the to put the deluxe back up okay to where it was so we were just below four we're now going to go back up to six yep uh here's how that sounds [Music] [Applause] mmm so many things to say all those people to argue online for hours and hours and hours that pedal distortion is much worse than amp distortion it's a whole new light on that whole debate isn't it it is fascinating it is an ecosystem it's a symbiotic relationship between the two devices exactly that one of them is out of kilter forget about it exactly but what i love is in 1978 they were designing a pedal to work with an amplifier yeah set like that you know all the stuff about you know uh getting your sounds specifically from pedals and stuff with really big clean amplifiers i mean definitely a thing think of the high watts and stuff that happened back then it's great but those amps will still run loud and they still had character yeah you know there's a reason why the ds1 into a really sparkly clean amplifier is always going to be hard work however into an amplifier that's got some love going yeah can be magic the last thing i want to do oh there's a couple things i want to do okay go on i want to turn the deluxe down yeah i'm gonna get the rat set up to the point where sounds nice and i'm gonna boost into the rat with the ds1 okay all right [Music] so [Music] ah [Music] [Applause] hey [Music] [Music] [Applause] so [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] so [Applause] [Music] [Music] wow [Music] um [Music] come on [Music] oh my god that was amazing that was actually amazing i just wanted to hear this yeah with all that extra top end but you you slipped into something there sort of the almost a drony rhythm thing yeah was and it's just like the way it works with the sound it was just beautiful really beautiful that was killer that was really unusual i think we should finish off with a couple different guitars okay [Music] so um [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] hello [Music] now [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] do [Music] [Music] be [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] do [Music] so [Music] me [Music] peace [Music] [Music] do [Music] so [Music] [Laughter] so this one's rubbish hey oh man that was so so so interesting yeah so it shows you a lot of people you'd like to use it as a boost yeah just as a boost the way that those edges work as a boost and that you know front end of the note magic apart from all the ampis i mean it was uh a passable jazz tone on the neck pickup of the casino there it cleans up beautifully with the ds1 yeah totally so um yeah really really so much more versatile than i would have ever thought it does make me want to plug the old um maxon sd9 back in now with a different appreciation of where it might sit yeah and isn't that interesting you know all this stuff has existed for so many years now and i think it's very easy to write it off for something that you don't like or that didn't work for you in a certain scenario and you know lo and behold you try it in a different scenario with a bunch of different things and all of a sudden it's much more workable than you thought it originally was yeah no great surprise there other than when you sat here listening to it it's exactly that it's a massive surprise and with the app turned a bit cleaner it's like that's a horrific mess and then all we did was turn the air pump was like yeah everything makes sense yes it's wonderful it just underlines that whole ethos well two what do we always sound tps there's no answers any better questions indeed the amp that you're pairing your pedal with makes an enormous difference it's everything and viewing that as a make louder device purely is bonkers it's equally part of the tone ecosystem as anything else you the guitar the pedals everything else nothing new there just worth reiterating yeah magic cool mate thanks for that that was um an education i have to say oh really yeah and nice to play really really really loud really loud really loud thank you everyone for watching i hope you enjoyed that again please subscribe if you haven't already subscribed a massive thank you to our preferred retailers in the uk and europe is anderson's music of guildford surry where i bought that ds1 nice uh and our dear friends in australia uh would be pedal empire of brisbane queensland and we do have links for our friends in america we do uh if you click on the links below they go to sweetwater.com if you use one of those links and you buy stuff dan and i get a kickback off that and it helps us fund this show thank you indeed massive thank you to our patrons on patreon thank you so much for your support indeed you also helped us fund this show indeed uh and of course to anyone that's gone to that pottershowstore.com and grabbed some of the new merch we have we should have all you need is a ds1 really but uh all you need is fuzz we'll do indeed indeed thanks so much everyone have a fantastic day and we'll see you soon thanks a lot bye bye [Music] [Applause]

Channel: That Pedal Show

Views: 265,497

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Id: hegRB27zIdg

Length: 58min 47sec (3527 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 22 2021