Joined: way back United Kingdom  Lessons: 1 Karma: 20  Moderator
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Ah well, the Boss DS 1 is often a source of debate amongst many guitarists. The problem is that the original Boss DS1s were made in Japan up until about 1992. However, manufacture was then moved to Taiwan (and still is) because labour is much cheaper. But, along with this cheaper labour also came cheaper components, which (most argue) produce a fairly tinny, artificial sound. If you find one of the original Japan ones, GET IT!!! They are incredibly rare - people don't want to sell them because they sound so much better than modern DS 1s. Having said that, you can get the Robert Keeley modded DS1, which is a modern day stock DS1 that has been modded to sound like the Japan DS1. This is the DS1 that I use and it does sound really good, but :-
A common error most people make when they first plug into a DS1 is that they use only the pedal to provide the distortion. WRONG!!! If you have a valve amp (TBH if its a solid state amp, you don't need a pedal) you should be running the pedal through the amp's overdrive channel, producing a much more natural and warm distortion, but with more punch. Anyway, you can check how old your friend's pedal is using this website - http://www.bossarea.com/serial/sndecoder.aspx
You put in the pedal's serial number and it tells you when it was made.
As Bodom said, the sound the pedal itself provides is fairly limited, but it's your amp that should be doing most of the talking anyway.
Hope this helps - take it easy,
Afro
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