BOSS DS-1 Distortion w/ Clipping Mods

The Boss DS-1 is one of the best-known distortion pedals ever made, in production since 1978 and used by players such as Kurt Cobain, Steve Vai and Joe Satriani. The stock pedal has a bright, upper-midrange-heavy voice that can sound thin and harsh as you turn up the distortion. The Seeing Eye mod, developed by Robert Keeley of Keeley Electronics, addresses this. It adds an LED to the clipping circuit (the “seeing eye”), which changes the way the signal clips and raises the gain. The result is a smoother, fuller and higher-gain distortion, with a more amp-like character that suggests a modern Marshall stack. It also reduces the sterile, fizzy quality the stock DS-1 can have at high settings. Reviewers also note it works well with single-coil guitars such as Strats. The pedal, captured here, has several switchable clipping options. Apart from the stock Silicon-Silicon symmetrical clipping the left 3-way switch makes two other options available for one of the two diodes: the Silicon diode can be bypassed or changed to an LED for clipping. The 2-way switch on the right side can change the other stock Silicon diode to LED clipping as well. The both switches allow for 4 additional clipping combinations in addition to the stock clipping. Please note: a possibly clean amp after the pedal will let you hear the characteristics of the different clipping modes best. Going into an amp at edge of breakup will most likely result in the amp's distortion dominating the tone. Alternatively you could lower the output of the DS-1 captures in your setup in order to avoid boosting the amp. However, boosting an amp with this pedal is a totally legit option even though the different clipping options are more subtle then. I suggest one of the two clipping options with a bypassed diode when boosting. Due to the bypass on one diode this modes not only have a higher overall output but also more definition. **Controls** Clipping: Si-Si: both diodes stock Silicon clipping LED-Si: one of the diodes switched to LED, the other one stock LED-LED: both diodes switched to LED Byp-Si: one of the diodes bypassed, the other one stock Byp-LED: one of the diodes bypassed, the other one switched to LED Dist (G): Sets the amount of distortion. The mod adds more gain across the range. Tone (T): Shapes the overall brightness. With the mod, the highs are more refined, and the bass response is also fuller. Level (V): Sets the output volume. I chose to capture various gain settings with every clipping variant each plus two different tone settings (4 and 6). The level/volume was set higher at lower gain settings and vice versa. I recommend watching Alberto Barrero's video on YouTube where he compares some tones (see below).