I received a Boss OS-2 yesterday and I'm either a) disappointed in it or, b) really proud of the Mutant Muff Fuzz, Modded Rat, Sweet 16, BlackFire, Mutant ToneBender, etc, that members of the forum taught me how to build. I guess it's a little of both. If it is really a combo of the SD-1 Super Overdrive (all mid's and very compressed) and a DS-1 Distortion (really fizzey/notched mid sounding) I'm can see why folks are moding them. It seems like Boss has compressed the life out of it. Do the mods really make that much difference? Is the SD-1 really that mid heavy? Does the DS-1 have a mid notch?
It's sort of cool that you can combine the 2 sounds and balance the mid dominant overdrive sound with the notched sound of the distortion channel. I may just need to work with it some more. Compared to the ones listed above, it is sort of lifeless and 2 dimensional sounding. I guess that is the point of building your own. The reason I wanted one was to compare to the ones I've built thru my marginal rig. The OS-2 makes my rig sound more marginal. I guess I'm surprised by the results.
Thanks to all for the superior sound. Don't mean to step on anyones toes.
8) :twisted:
personally i was unimpressed with this pedal also.
i prefer homebrew to custom ones. i have been using one of my custom overdrives as my main sound now for some time. everynow ad then i will take a break and play something else buti always come back to my little lm386 preamp.
of course that is also in between fireflys
A friend of mine has one also. I must agree, it sounds a little weak. Boss would have done much better to make a DS-1 and a BD-2 in one box and then have a blend pot, but anyway :mrgreen:
I traded it and another Boss pedal for my RP100 digital processer thingy and it was a great improvement.
Then I linked to a Forum, where I learned most of what I know about electronics, and 'met' some really great folks, and started building pedals...
To make a quite long and convoluted story somewhat shorter...I only have 2 non DIY pedals that I use: the Boss RV3 Digital echo reverb, and and Art Proverb [echo/reverb]...I use the ART set for basic depth inducing echoverb [fairly light] and use the RV3 to get long echoes or heavy Verb for leads or what not...
After decades of trying Distortions [and a Boss GE7 EQ, which I maybe should have kept] of many varied types, I found that building them made it much much easier to find the Tones I'd been searching for...
I'ts a never ending search though...but now at least I do have excellent examples of fantastic results to rely on for playing and gigging !!!
Hey what was the GE-7 like? Was it any good, cause I might be able to get my hands on one! For cheap! :)
When I used it with another Fuzz [Fab Tone or DS1] [which by the way is quite beneficial'], it did make some heavy noise...course I never tried anything else and would imagine that theres a boost to noise type ratio with these things.
Overall The usefulness of the pedal is what makes it desirable.
It let's you get all kinda new tones from whatever you have already going, can tune out some unwanted freq's...basically allows 'great' tone control and Boost [very nice for leads and 2nd/3rd gain stage level and eq tuning.
Actually between the GE-7 and some 'generic' Fuzz like DS-1, a player wouldn't be doing too bad, I think the ease of makeing a DIY Fuzz tuned to your liking makes it worthwhile, however a 7 band EQ is a different story...
I hope what I said left you feeling that I liked using the GE-7...bring your Fuzz and see if the noise doesn't bother you...you'll probably like making use of it...basically when I have heavily Boosted, and high gain Fuzz going, I expect noise, and also I expect I'll be playing something 'heavy' through it when
they're both ON so the noise will be masked by the signal.
When I used it with another Fuzz [Fab Tone or DS1] [which by the way is quite beneficial'], it did make some heavy noise...course I never tried anything else and would imagine that theres a boost to noise type ratio with these things.
Overall The usefulness of the pedal is what makes it desirable.
It let's you get all kinda new tones from whatever you have already going, can tune out some unwanted freq's...basically allows 'great' tone control and Boost [very nice for leads and 2nd/3rd gain stage level and eq tuning.
Actually between the GE-7 and some 'generic' Fuzz like DS-1, a player wouldn't be doing too bad, I think the ease of makeing a DIY Fuzz tuned to your liking makes it worthwhile, however a 7 band EQ is a different story...
I hope what I said left you feeling that I liked using the GE-7...bring your Fuzz and see if the noise doesn't bother you...you'll probably like making use of it...basically when I have heavily Boosted, and high gain Fuzz going, I expect noise, and also I expect I'll be playing something 'heavy' through it when
they're both ON so the noise will be masked by the signal.
Buzzing noise, that's a problem. My current setup makes a bit of a buzz allready... :(
I agree but Steve Vai and Satch use the DS-1 right? Works for them I guess.
My personal take on the reason that artisan/boutique effects, distortion-based ones in particular, sound so much better than mass-produced ones is that the mass-produced ones have to be more conservatively designed (and manufactured) than the handmade ones.
They have to sound acceptable with a wide range of component tolerances, and they're usually designed so that just about any combination of knob settings at least produces a recognizable sound.
While it's okay for a boutique distortion design to go into shrieking oscillation at its extreme settings (even desirable, depending on your politics), Boss do not allow such a thing.
Also, while I check every one of my boxes with the voltmeter to make sure the components are working within their ranges, and replace them individually if they are not, the biggies can't afford that kind of personal attention.
It's just like other manufactured goods, such as automobiles, where the ones produced for mass consumption are just blander.
Quote from: smoguzbenjaminBuzzing noise, that's a problem. My current setup makes a bit of a buzz allready... :(
hey ben you would proablly be better off getting a basic three band. you can make your own eq notch based off of the bosses schematic
Quote from: WGThickPresenceMutant Muff Fuzz
I've never heard of that before. Do you have a link to a schem or something? The Muff Fuzz has become a pet project for me :oops:
Quote from: WGThickPresenceI received a Boss OS-2 yesterday and I'm either a) disappointed in it or, b) really proud of the Mutant Muff Fuzz, Modded Rat, Sweet 16, BlackFire, Mutant ToneBender, etc, that members of the forum taught me how to build. I guess it's a little of both. If it is really a combo of the SD-1 Super Overdrive (all mid's and very compressed) and a DS-1 Distortion (really fizzey/notched mid sounding) I'm can see why folks are moding them. It seems like Boss has compressed the life out of it. Do the mods really make that much difference? Is the SD-1 really that mid heavy? Does the DS-1 have a mid notch?
It's sort of cool that you can combine the 2 sounds and balance the mid dominant overdrive sound with the notched sound of the distortion channel. I may just need to work with it some more. Compared to the ones listed above, it is sort of lifeless and 2 dimensional sounding. I guess that is the point of building your own. The reason I wanted one was to compare to the ones I've built thru my marginal rig. The OS-2 makes my rig sound more marginal. I guess I'm surprised by the results.
Thanks to all for the superior sound. Don't mean to step on anyones toes.
8) :twisted:
you want me to mod it for you.???
A friend dropped me off a DS-1 to modify. I played it a little bit with my strat through a fender champ and I have to say that it sounds like crap. I can't understand what Satch and Vai see in this thing, maybe it works better with their amps or with hotter pickups to drive it. I'm going to do the keeley mods. I already put in the LED to replace one of the diodes and the 47 pf cap but that's it so far. It did improve the distorted tone somewhat, it actually sounds good at medium drive but with the drive maxed it still sounds like ASS to me.
The only redeeming values I can see is that it is cheap, and it is a BOSS, which means it is well built and reliable.
I had an old Boss DS1...screwed up and sold it
I got a very new looking used Boss DS1 not very long after that for 10$.
It did not sound much like the old one. I sounded like ----.
The Tone knob went from MUD...directlyto...HARSHness, I dunno somebody might like it, but no doubt the old one was superior pedal.
"I Saw the Box"...lol...Ya know how easy it would be for someone to pop in a cool ckt they'd whipped up and put it into a DS-1 box in five minutes...that say Joe bought because he heard Randy had been 'seen' using one?
These guys aren't messing with junk for very long...just take a look at the rest of their setup...by the time you spend like that on stuff, you're already reaping the benefits of fantastic engineering and workmanship...I've read about Ppl using Dummy head and such just for endorsements...but actually have their favorite whatever [highly modded with 'those' tubes set just 'so'] sitting behind and the front amps just have a shell and an indicator lamp. They make special knobs for them.
So when I try an Old and New Boss Pedal and hear about so and so ...seen using Boss DS-1, I take all that with a grain of salt...nice box though..mod or put something really killer in there and you're rockin'...
I have no idea what the newer new ones are like. the newer one I had was a bit 'oranger' than the old one I had [it was in great shape].
Actually I kinda liked the old one and really wished I could 'ave it back.
Still it wasn't really 'all that' anyway...maybe I didn't have the right amp for it...ya know it's all in the amp...lol...just kidding...all in the amp guitar, speaker, efkts, strings, hands, pickups, mind, asthetics, vibe, and anything else it depends on like weather.
I don't mean to be bashing Boss or something that works for someone else. Maybe they work well into a marshal stack or something, but I would think Boss' main customers would be guys like me pluging them into SS combo amps. Their site says they have sold 7 million pedals. That's a bunch. Probably most of those are SD-1's and DS-1's.
In looking at some schematics and working with the pedal some more, I think the OS-2 is a combo of these 2 pedal modded to be more extreme versions of themselves so that mixing them would be more varied.
I'm going to try some EQ with it to see if that is the issue.
The Mutant Muff Fuzz I'm refering to is a cross between Gus' Modded MF version #1 (check shcematics page) and Gary Burchett's Mockman at Runoffgroove.com. I found it sounds more like the OS-2 with 2 SI diodes, which is not my preference. I like mixed diodes in it (which might be why I prefer it to the OS-2. I'm using 1 LED and 1 SI or Jfet. Or an SI/Jfet combo is nice. Big differences in the sound. I can see why Keeley is adding an LED
Ansil, what mod's would you recommend? I'll probably leave it stock at this point and trade it off.
I think I'm going to try using jfets as clippers in the DS-1. How do you hook that up again?
With a MPF102 or J201 the 2 outside leads work and you are supposed to tie the middle one to one of the outside ones, but I used my multimeter to figure it out. :)
I breadboarded a DS-1 once and it elicited my "I don't get it..." reaction. I thought I wired something wrong, but I checked and re-checked and it was right. IIRC, it sounded pretty muddy.
My understanding of the Vai/Satch thing is that it is used through an already-cranked Marshall. I think a cranked-up amp can make a -lot- of things sound good that don't necessarily sound so hot on their own. For example, I don't have much use for my fuzz face through my SS amp, but through my cranked up tube amp it's a completely different story. Of course, boosters work that way by definition. Their purpose in life is to push a cranked amp that is not giving you quite enough on its own.
I suspect the DS1 must push their amp in a way that is giving them something they want, given their EQ, setup, pickups, speakers and everything else that affects their tone.
Doug
Like most things in life, I over look the subtleties. I also tend to have expectations that are too high.
I expected the OS-2 to sound better than anything I could possibly build. Boss has unlimited resources and complex circuits, why wouldn't they sound better.
They don't because they don't have Aron, R.G., Jack, Doug, Gus, Joe, Mark, Jay, Gary, etc.
After further experimentation, I think I have been too hard on this pedal. It has a nice grind in the mid's and by balancing the drive/tone/color knobs, I can get some pretty nice sounds. I probably would prefer it with some mod's. I'll have to decide what to do. Still very compressed, and it seems to have some direct sound coming thru as well, but???
When I ran it into my PV tube combo, it sounded even better and it's cool being able to change the character of the distortion with the flick of a knob.
Anyway, I'm sorry I judged it to quickly, I shouldn't have been so harsh.
However, the ones we build REALLY sound good. :D :twisted: