Mauz, my boss and friend, is probably most well known for playing in Dystopia. He’s also played in Mindrot, Nigel Peppercock, Medication Time, and now heads up the oi punk outfit Kicker. One day at our print shop a year or so back, I noticed he had a horribly beat up BOSS DS-1. It looked like shit and something was wrong with it. He handed it over to the Doktor.
Just to be clear, that’s not what his pedal looked like. That’s a clean, normal DS-1, a classic in the distortion world. It’s a lot of people’s first stomp box. It’s a simple IC distortion circuit using silicon diode clippers and a very basic low-high tone control. That’s also why it’s a fun pedal to work on, because there’s a lot you can do. Mauz’s DS-1 pedal was spray painted black by some old punk rocker and was missing all the knobs. It needed to be cleaned up, but the technical refurbishing came first.
Continue reading “Extreme BOSS DS-1 Makeover: Sewage Edition”