The Boss DS-1 Pedal (you know, The ugly orange one)

[vengeance]

Has anyone ever used the Boss DS-1 in front of the distortion of their amp (preferably a tube amp)? I've read that Steve vai & Joe Satriani use one to enhance their lead guitar playing & that they use it in front of their amps distortion! Any opinions on this are greatly appreciated!

 

[xenophobe]

Yes, the DS-1 is a great little distortion pedal for a tube head that has problems geting good distortion/crunch on it's own. It can be used to overdrive your tube amp in a good way.

It's kinda noisy, and a little hissy (not very articulate, more of a blanket white-noise type distortion).

It'll load up the signal strength and, if you've found the right settings, will give you a nice blend of sterile and noisy diode distortion and warm and fuzzy preamp distortion.

You might need to fool with it a bit, but level slighly past 12... almost at 1, and distortion between 1 and 2 o'clock...

I've been using my MT-2 lately, but just on my practice rig.

 

[vengeance]

Thanks for your insight! I've been curious about that pedal! I know Chuck Schuldiner used one from the "Human" release all the way back to "Scream Bloody Gore" I believe!

Have you ever used an Ibanez tube Screamer? I know there is like 3 or 4 different types of Ibanez tube Screamers! Andy Sneap mentioned that Nevermore guitarist Jeff Loomis used a tube screamer in front of his Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier! Thats seems like an awful lot of gain & too much distortion! I wonder how that would compare to the DS-1 or a Boss Super Overdrive pedal like what Zakk Wyld uses?