DS-1

[petesguitar1]

Hey folks. Just been mucking around with one of my DS-1s and have found a few cool little things. I was wondering about the R14 mod. Mine is a TAiwan built DS-1, and the Diodes and transistors are marked, but not the resistors or caps. Any help or a parts layout would be much appreciated.

Thanks

[5150]

Hmm... if there's no marking at all for the resistors, R14 should be between the IC and two fairly big caps (which happen to be C1 and C5, but without markings those don't help you), with a large (electrolytic on mine, I think) cap right next to it.  It might be clearer to say that if you look at the board, two resistors will be below the IC (if the IC is on the right), to the right of a nice, big, round cap, above D8 - R14 will be the one nearer the IC and will be, unless my pedal is just weird, red-red-red-gold.

Jeff

[petesguitar1]

Thanks dude, I'm gonna start playing 

[petesguitar1]

Well I decided to have a little play and this is what I came up with. Just one wire!



Now this seemed to give a volume boost, as well as make the distortion know into more of a presence control. Very weird yet cool!

I still have no idea what resistors or caps are what (althoughn I can decipher a little by following schematics, but I'm fairly sketchy. I've taken a pic of my DS-1 if anyone wants it -



Sorry about the size of the pics, I just thought it would be much easier to label or describe as big.

[5150]

Maybe someone who knows the DS-1 better should comment on this - if it's a 'presence control', could it be that a cap in the circuit that killed off some of the harsh highs is going from more to less bypassed, and this is putting in more very-high treble?

I'd also like to know if there is distortion or not distortion, what components the wire goes between, and what the two wires above the board are doing (unless they're just connecting that LED as a clipping diode, letting it come out of the box and play like the Keeley mod).

Jeff

[petesguitar1]

Yep, just a clipping LED with the wires! Just found it a bit easier than my big clumsy fingers.

The wire on the back appears to be going from one cap to another (don't know the numbers, sorry). There is sort of a constant distortion, but when you turn the distortion up, it seems to come 'forward' in the sound. I think it may be adding more bass. I'll see if I can get some sound samples for you.

[5150]

If the distortion is still constant, I'm curious as to where it's coming from.  If the drive control isn't affecting the amount, you must have either separated that entire chunk of circuit or somehow made it only adjust the amount of treble the clipping section cap is taking off (unless I'm mistaken about the 'presence' effect being from that smoothing cap).  In the first case, my first guess would be that you're getting a fairly constant level of IC distortion (or possibly some other distortable component on that board... does the level change when you put another booster in front of it, or when you turn the level up, or wire two 9vs up next to each other for 18v power...erm, that last one should be tamed, so you don't blow the caps) and the 'bringing out' is because of that treble being reintroduced - I doubt that bass is being added, as that wouldn't seem to bring it 'forward' - generally speaking, more bass content either adds to 'size' or 'distance' in my (limited) experience.  If you can identify the caps from the schematic link posted on several DS-1 threads (which has a top-down layout of it), or maybe highlight the leads of the connected caps in a top-down view, so I can identify them, we might turn this into quite a bit of fun.

Jeff

[jeroen_verbeeck]

I think I can help you with the parts, take a look at this: