www.shortscale.org

[Mike]

it's definitely on Nevermind

and definitely NOT on In Utero.

I built one from the schematic (I'm playing around with some things for some future pedals, and making money off Cobain's legacy is a sound business move) and playing it through my Princeton and my Marshall, and through my Thomann Tech21 Blonde clone, and combinations thereof = that guitar sound.

It's tracked through lots of different amps with varied tone stacks (my Princeton has a Bassman tone stack) and Butch Vig loved loads of tracks, but it's there. The cheapest most overlooked and dissed distortion pedals out there is actually totally responsible for all the guitar sounds that changed the world of all us 90s kids

I may have drunk some whisky this evening.
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MadeByMike.co.uk - Handmade Pedals and Custom Builds
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[Doog]

hahahaahahh

I borrowed my gf's one and it actually really sounds half-decent, it just gets such a bad rep from the beginners who are using em with shitty amps and shittier technique

I wish you well on your Kurdtz ToneQuest. Mike DS1 + SMALL CLONE double pedal?? 🤔

[Bacchus]

[Doog]

lol nope

[dezb1]

The DS-1 is a decent pedal but it NEEDS a decent amp. Too many decisions have been made on its sound by people with 10 watt Gorilla amps.

Still prefer the SD-1 though
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Extreme distortion used discreetly...

[singlepup]

I just found an old demo featuring the DS-1 at 1:40. I ran it through a Blues Deluxe Reissue with a Small Stone phaser. Sounds good to my ears. I've been thinking about tracking down another DS-1...

https://benji24.bandcamp.com/track/chunneling

[gusman2x]

[dezb1]

[Mike]

Tone control can also dial in some horribleness. Needs a careful hand

But yeah I think the majority of the hate is due to bad amplifiers and control settings.

I'm still playing with ideas. May do something about the weezer debut album sounds
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MadeByMike.co.uk - Handmade Pedals and Custom Builds
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[jcyphe]

PJ Harvey Rid of Me era had ds-1 sounds. I know she toured with it, don't know how much of it was actually on the record.
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[dezb1]

Don't have a DS-1 but do still have my first ever pedal which was a copy of one:


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Extreme distortion used discreetly...

[gusman2x]

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www.lowrisemusic.com

uugh, another Manchester alt/indie band

[Concretebadger]

I picked one up from a local second-hand shop at the weekend for just under £30. You really do need a decent tube/valve amp to run it into, but it does produce some usable sounds. I dunno. I was expecting to be disappointed, but it's not bad. Maybe there's some snobbery going on in the sense that something that costs less than £50 isn't supposed to sound good?

As Mike and others have mentioned, the tone knob is "blanket over the speaker cab" at one extreme and "tin can full of bees" at the other but the regions in between are all right. Maxing everything just sounds shit. If that's what beginners try when they plug into the ten watt practice amps with eight inch speakers, I can see where the problem could be. I found somewhere between ten and eleven o clock on the tone knob was about right, with the distortion around two thirds of the way up, depending on how bright or dark your amp's voicing is. Maxing the distortion and setting the tone around noon gives a surprisingly nice cutting lead sound.

It doesn't clean up completely, so its use as an OD/boost is limited. Still, the tone knob actually does something, it's more transparent than a muff or a Rat, and it can do more than unity volume at pretty much every setting. It's far from the best on the market, but at that price point it does the job well enough. I guess it is to dirt boxes what the SM57 is to recording mics in that sense. The only real area of improvement I can imagine is tweaking the tone stack somehow. A mids control with the bass and treble both preset at 50% with internal trimmers, maybe?

[Fran]

There's a lot of snobbery towards the old standard pedals these days, usually from players with all the gear and no idea.

The amount of times I've heard people go on about how bands like the Pixies, Stone Roses, Ride etc had 'a great sound' then go on to say Boss pedals are rubbish

I find the DS-1 very limited and prefer the OS-2. To my ears the OS-2 has more useable range.
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[paul_]

My fave Kurt live and studio sounds were his Jag (1meg pots and Super D) going through a DS-2. I always thought his MIJ Stangs and Sansamp on the In Utero tours sounded like flat-ass dogshit by comparison. The In Utero sessions were great too though as they were the dream team through a Twin Reverb (versus his ridiculous live rig).


Link

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[Noirie.]

There’s a reverse colour scheme DS-1 out atm that supposedly is made to MIJ specs.

[BearBoy]

Boss released two black DS-1s recently: DS-1 BK (silver knobs, black screw, only available at GC in the US, came out late 2016) and DS-1 4A (gold knobs, silver screw, more widely available, came out in 2017 as part of their 40th anniversary). A number of people over on Stompboxzone have them and say they're identical to the current orange MIT ones inside. The early MIT ones (up to about 1994) were the same as the MIJ ones.
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[Fran]

[BearBoy]

[Doog]