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BossDriveLate 1970s

DS-1

A transistor boost into hard clipping, bright and unsubtle.

What the circuit does

A transistor gain stage feeds an op-amp stage, and the result is clipped hard to ground by diodes. The tone control is a single sweep between a dark low-pass and a bright high-pass rather than a stack, which is why the two ends sound so different from each other.

What to listen for

A brighter and more brittle edge than most drives, with a scooped quality in the middle of the tone sweep. It sounds thin on its own into a clean amp and comes alive in front of one that is already breaking up.

Where it goes

The overdrive and distortion slot

After the fuzz and before everything time based. Distorting a signal and then delaying it keeps the repeats clean; delaying a signal and then distorting it drives the repeats and the dry note together into one smear.

Controls

  • Tone
  • Level
  • Dist

Others in the drive family