First post, hoping for some help with ds1 malfunction

[Ad8chd]

Hello everyone, thank you for taking the time to read my first post here. I've got a couple of old ds1 pedals one from like 25 years ago and one I recently had fall in my lap. The old one I had as a kid, and did a kid style repair on the battery leads when I ripped out the 9 volt receptical. It worked fine as of a couple of years ago. I decided to try modding the old one, having just found out (I know I'm like always the last to know) that there was a way to make that orange tank sound decent. So I got rid of C12 to get some mods in my life. The check light comes on and stays on, the switch has no effect. I get my clean tone as long as the battery is in, without a battery I get nothing. The tone and distortion pots do nothing but the volume pot works. If anyone has any ideas I would greatly appreciate some help. Thanks!!

[antonis]

Hi & Welcome..

Could you plz post a schematic in relation with that C12 mod you refer on..??
( I suspect it's the 100nF shunt capacitor of the LPF part of Tonestack but let's be more specific..)

[Ad8chd]

Thanks for the response. That was a good guess, I would even venture to assume an educated one. Here is the circuit. http://urso94.free.fr/techniguitare_com/Boss%20DS-1%20us.pdf

[Ad8chd]

Lol I'm dumb. There was a precision screwdriver but stuck in there. Pulled it out and peddle works on the power adapter but not batteries but batteries are stupid anyway. Sounds remarkably different with that cap pulled out. As I turn toward the other end of the tone pot it just gets worse and worse lol

[Ad8chd]

Also as an afterthought, why would they put that there when it sounds so much better without it?

[FiveseveN]

Hello and welcome to Aesthetics 101: taste is subjective.
Joe Satriani, Gary Moore, Robert Smith and Steve Vai seemed to like them cap and all. Could they be hearing something different? This calls for...
Signal Chains 101: what comes after an effect (other effects, amp, cab, mic, room etc.) changes the way it sounds.

[Steben]

Lol I'm dumb. There was a precision screwdriver but stuck in there. Pulled it out and peddle works on the power adapter but not batteries but batteries are stupid anyway. Sounds remarkably different with that cap pulled out. As I turn toward the other end of the tone pot it just gets worse and worse lol

What do you mean with worse?
The typical mid notch cut is gone probably?

[Ad8chd]

What do you mean with worse?
The typical mid notch cut is gone probably?
[/quote]

So the cap I pulled was part of the lpf in the tone circuit (I believe, it's an uneducated guess). When I have the tone pot set all the way counterclockwise the my tone is pretty good. I'm assuming that without that cap to send a part of my signal to ground that more of my guitar makes it out of the pedal. As the tone pot is turned clockwise, it sounds like my tone is being buried in a box by thick blankets and having its nuts slowly shaved off. By the time I get to 12:00 it's unusable, at least to my taste. Can anybody point me in the direction of something to read that will help me better understand how what I did changed my tone, because I would love to do the same on the high end, unless maybe I'm getting my full tone when pinned to the left and dialing to the right is just removing stuff? I don't knowledge this is my first attempt at this. Also, if I were replace the pots with a higher value would it be the same as going from 250k pots to 500k pots when I swapped my single coils for humbuckers, which brightened up my time a lot...?

[FiveseveN]

So the cap I pulled was part of the lpf in the tone circuit

C12 would be part of the LPF but what you're describing sounds exactly like the opposite: like you removed C11, the HPF part of the tone stack. The solution is to put it back and think about the desired outcome first and then come up with the necessary modifications.

Can anybody point me in the direction of something to read that will help me better understand how what I did changed my tone

Overall: https://www.electrosmash.com/boss-ds1-analysis
Tone control: https://www.coda-effects.com/p/big-muff-tonestack-dealing-with-mids.html
And you can simulate its response with https://www.guitarscience.net/tsc/bigmuff.htm

I were replace the pots with a higher value would it be the same [...]

No.

[Steben]

I think the removal of C12 is the worst of the simple ones. To the right one gets a 60ties fuzz "tone" but without the fuzz nastyness. Indeed only with the tone to the left it sounds good.
Removing R17 is better. The best is changing the values.