I have not used this pedal much, not finding a way, or learn how to, play sensibly with overdrive, distortion or fuzz.
There are loads of information about modifications available on the internet, I found this site
(electrosmash.com, DS-1 analysis)
to be interesting.
To be fair, when I bought this pedal, I only had solid state amplifiers. I never really explored using it into a valve amplifier set at the edge of destruction, boosting it into glorious overdrive, volume issues, you understand. And, not really knowing how to play with distorted sounds.
I would like to be able to use it, I do realise it cannot replicate tube-overdrive tones, but, it should be able to just thicken up the tone a bit, and even give some useful distortion? I am not planning to buy any distortion/fuzz/overdrive pedals, so, leave those recommendations aside.
I changed the R9 (bias) resistor in the “transistor booster” stage, from the standard 22 Ohm to a 200 Ohm.
I think the recommended 1 kOhm might be a bit too much. It should smooth out the signal into the OP-amp chip a bit. What I would like, is some assymetrical clipping from the clipping diodes, and, really, a less-square waveform out. I am not sure how to evaluate the tone control requirements, apart from maybe reducing the ‘Mid Scoop” filtering.
I do have a TubeScreamer, no need to go there. I need to think on this a bit, I cannot see that I will like adding a series diode/replacing one diode with a LED in terms of signal level at clipping, it has more that enough output at the clipped level, as is. There has to be a way to smooth over the edges of the square wave a bit. Do the impossible, go from “hard clipper” to “soft clipper”.
