The Boss DS-1 is a rite of passage for most guitarists. It’s the pedal that sits in that perfect sweet spot between being affordable, available everywhere, and making a massive difference to your sound the very first time you stomp on it. I’m genuinely not exaggerating when I say that probably 60% of the people reading this bought a DS-1 as their first pedal — or at least within the first handful of pedals they ever owned.
But the DS-1 is also a victim of its own success. Because it’s our first pedal, we’re usually not as, shall we say, refined with how we use the controls. Who knew that putting everything on 10 wasn’t the secret to perfect tone? So we end up carrying this idea that the DS-1 is a blunt instrument: fun, loud, chaotic, but not exactly subtle. As we improve as players, we start chasing more boutique tools to shape our sound, and the humble orange box gets shoved aside.
But in the immortal, unavoidable words of Taylor Swift: “It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me.”
The DS-1 was never the issue.
The tone control is a perfect example. I remembered it as being mush at one end, fizzy at the other, with a tiny sliver of sweetness in between. But sitting down with it again, there’s actually a lot of colour in the sweep — almost like it shifts where the midrange sits in the EQ. Sure, the top of the dial can be a little spiky, but there’s far more nuance than most of us gave it credit for back in our teenage bedroom-rock days.
The gain control is the real surprise, though. We often treat the DS-1 as the “Kurt Cobain pedal” and assume it only does that one saturated grunge tone. But there is so much light and shade through the whole range. On a Strat neck pickup, low gain almost acts like a treble-boosted push — bright, dynamic, and touch-sensitive. Around a third of the way up, you get a gritty breakup that responds beautifully when you dig in. And yes, cranked all the way, you get that classic saturated roar, but even then it’s more “amp on the edge” than people remember.
Of course, this design dates back to the late ’70s, and it’s not flawless. The noise floor is noticeably higher than modern distortion pedals, especially at higher gain. The old-school side-mounted jacks aren’t exactly pedalboard-friendly either, now that most new pedals are going top-mounted. But for something you can pick up used any day of the week for a very reasonable price, the DS-1 still holds up shockingly well.
It deserves its place in the pedal history books — and honestly, it might just deserve another spot on your board.
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