DS-1 modded and rehoused…

[greysun]

Okay, so it's not a madbean build, but yall have been giving me advice in the general forum, so... yea.

It took me 15minutes to close this thing because boss in the 90s just liked to rats nest their wiring and I didn't wanna replace literally everything in it, so I don't have a gut shot, per se, but I threw the book at this thing and it paid off. Riffing off the internet's version of keeley mods, I replaced the following parts:

C1: 100n film
C2: 1u film
C3: toggled on/off/on - 440n, 100n, 1u; all film
C5: 100n film
C7: 220p ceramic
C8: 1u film
C9: 1u film
C11: 47n film
C12: 100n film
C13: 100n film
D5: 3mm red diffused led + 47p ceramic parallel
R13: 2.4k
R14: 1.5k
R35: 2.4k
R39: 20k
Switch: normally open momentary foot switch
LED: 5mm red diffused
Power: swapped in an "outie"

Removed the battery and rewired the power to be direct. Had to augment ground wires to the jacks as a result to test, but it worked!

The rest are pretty much the keeley seeing eye mods as found on the internet, which have some degree of variance, albeit slightly. All EXCEPT:

C3 is what lets this get pretty fuzzy. Even 100n (stock is 47n, I think, and Keeley didn't change this) darkens it up slightly and nicely for a distortion, but the further north you go the fuzzier it gets - the left switch is stock center, fuzz bottom, fuzziest top. This might make it great for lead work. I think wampler showcased this in a video, and I went all in for it. 

The so called synth mods are... fine. lol. I'm wondering if these keeley mods actually messed with how the synth mods work, but I'm not sharp enough to figure it out. Toggle in the middle of the pedal turns them on, toggle on the right is on/on/on and goes through the varied mods. They're a bit unpredictable in mine and therefore I think I'll be leaving them off, but I do like to add noise here and there for texture, so I'm glad they're at least there and toggle-able.

I notice in bypass it's a little fatter than direct - attributing this possibly to the change in c3, which I believe is part of the buffer circuit, and the fact that I did not make this true bypass. It honestly doesn't sound half bad, lol - but at some point I might need to address it. If I wind up liking the sound, I might throw together an actual board that's not so messy with a 3pdt true bypass.

Anywho, here are the pics I have:

[greysun]

I couldn't help myself and continued to mod this to be true bypass*

Why true bypass* (asterisk)? Well, the in/out buffers are technically still there - I can just bypass them in clean.

How did I do this? I took out the transistors that control the electronic switching (Q6, Q7 and Q8) and jumper'd the outside pins of Q6 and Q7 and left Q8 empty. All of the parts at the bottom of the boss board were for the electronic switching, so I took out everything but the resistors in that part of the circuit for space and to possibly help with any noise. The 3PDT now has PLENTY of space and it worked like a charm. Used madbeans foot switch diagram and it's beautiful (well, it doesn't LOOK beautiful cause it was tight working in there, but you know what I mean. Hehe).

Gut shots below. Any of the cream caps are of my own addition. You can see the LED for clipping near the IC, as well as the jumper at q6. Figuring out the power took me longer than I'd like to admit, but the way the battery was intertwined with the jack and power wasn't what I was used to.

So all in all - I took a pedal I didn't like, modded it to sound better in stock settings, added a "fuzz" switch (which so far is GREAT for leads), made it true bypass and put it into a housing I prefer. Win/win all around. Modding, true bypassing and rehousing these old buggers IS possible.

[greysun]

Worth noting: you could easily take the buffers out if you've already gone this far into modding the pedal, but I liked where it landed and didn't wanna push my luck. If you really don't want them even with the effect on...

www.electrosmash.com/boss-ds1-analysis breaks down where the buffers start and stop. Remove those parts and set your in and out wires accordingly.