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Anybody done any good Boss DS1 mods lately?

Started by Cortexturizer, April 03, 2017, 09:58:39 AM

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Cortexturizer

Guitarist from my band has one and I offered to mod it for him, haven't built a pedal in a while ( :/ ) so that would be a small not so time-consuming high for me.

What's good that's out there, how to supercharge it and make it sound good? I am free to drill through the enclosure, so that's on the table as well.

Thanks! :)
https://kuatodesign.blogspot.com - thoughts on some pedals I made
https://soundcloud.com/kuato-design-stompboxes - sounds and jams

Willybomb

Do the wampler and keeley mods.  I did some of the JCM mods and did the ASE/Ultra completely in the one pedal.

matmosphere

I did this to a broken ds-1





Sounds great now ;)

Cortexturizer

Quote from: Willybomb on April 03, 2017, 10:44:59 AM
Do the wampler and keeley mods.  I did some of the JCM mods and did the ASE/Ultra completely in the one pedal.
Thanks man, will try those out!
Cheers
https://kuatodesign.blogspot.com - thoughts on some pedals I made
https://soundcloud.com/kuato-design-stompboxes - sounds and jams


Cortexturizer

https://kuatodesign.blogspot.com - thoughts on some pedals I made
https://soundcloud.com/kuato-design-stompboxes - sounds and jams

thesmokingman

I'll try to be brief-ish ... if you're a bedroom player, I like tweaking the amz fat mod to lower the gain just enough to get rid of that harshness at the end of the dial and keep the frequency response more sane(if you do the fat mod, it really lowers the gain and leaves the tone dark at the same time). I do shotgun in the film caps to get more bass ala the keeley mods, and I like to convert the tone control into a skreddy type big muff control (flat/scoop/mid on a switch). If the guy likes extra switches, give him one for diode clipping options as well.

if you're a stage volume player, I tend to leave the frequency response of the pedal alone and just lower the gain by tweaking the fat mod as above and tweaking the tone stack some(I generally use the violet ram's head values).
once upon a time I was Tornado Alley FX

Cortexturizer

https://kuatodesign.blogspot.com - thoughts on some pedals I made
https://soundcloud.com/kuato-design-stompboxes - sounds and jams

matmosphere

I realize my post was not the most useful but I will say if you want to do a true bypas mod you can use one of the compact 3dpts inside the pedal without having to drill any new holes or anything.

That list of mods Tim provided is fantastic. If I ever have a working ds1 again I'll have to play around with it.

flanagan0718

I've done a bunch of these (excluding the synth mods) I found that the most useful ones are:

-Tube Emulator
-keeley seeing eye mod
-Evil distortion

The others didn't seem to make that big of a difference. Changing some of the values helps low and mid range frequencies.

Muadzin

Evil distortion mod

Such a name alone should warrant doing that mod.  8)

This could be a fun project, find some cheap 2nd hand DS-1's, mod them all accept one and then do a shootout.

Cortexturizer

Quote from: Matmosphere on April 03, 2017, 11:34:24 AM
I did this to a broken ds-1



Sounds great now ;)

At first I disregarded this comment as not relevant to my question but now after having tried all the mods and beyond I must say that it was actually the best advice I got here...

What a terrible circuit.
https://kuatodesign.blogspot.com - thoughts on some pedals I made
https://soundcloud.com/kuato-design-stompboxes - sounds and jams

matmosphere

Quote from: Cortexturizer on April 13, 2017, 06:55:25 PM
Quote from: Matmosphere on April 03, 2017, 11:34:24 AM
I did this to a broken ds-1



Sounds great now ;)

At first I disregarded this comment as not relevant to my question but now after having tried all the mods and beyond I must say that it was actually the best advice I got here...

What a terrible circuit.

I know there's some cool mods for the ds-1 but to me you're just starting from such a meh place it's not worth it.

That's why I made mine into a rat. No need to waste a nice enclosure.

Dminner

I built this with a ds1....

Probably a bit gnarly for most people though, but I like noise and glitchy stuff  :)

Here is a quick demo of it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fHjxKpVvEig

I also made this, which started as a ds1: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cysOLmgU5Uw

somnif

I remember back in high school my friend (who first convinced me to pick up a guitar) had a DS-1 and I was so damn envious of it. One stomp to go from clean to dirt! (And I didn't have 50$ to spare on an effect....). I am no fan of the effect these days, but back then it was glorious (from afar)

It was what first convince me to try building a pedal instead... though my initial attempts were horrendous failures.  Ah memories.