In this project, I dusted off a Boss DS-1 distortion pedal that had been given to me about a year ago, which I had been told was "broken" and that if I wanted to see if I could fix it, I could have it. When I first opened it up, it was apparent that the main two reasons for the pedal not operating properly were that the lead going to the output jack was barely hanging on, and immediately severed when I started investigating; the other was that the 9 volt battery which had been contained in the pedal had died a horrible, explosive death. I cleaned up the battery terminals, and replaced it with a healthy 9v, and I resoldered the jacks on the pedal, and like magic, I had an operating DS-1. I looked around on the internet to try to find more information about the "All Seeing Eye Mod” that I’d heard about, a rather notorious modification done by a man named Robert Keeley. After finding a substantial amount of information about what capacitor and resistor values he normally alters, as well as replacing the clipping diode with a 3mm LED, I made trips out to Radioshack and Frys to get comparable components. Then, I called up my good friend Justin Boyson, and he was excited to get hacking on this pedal with me. We spent an evening swapping components, and got it to work, only to find that the larger, 1uf capacitors that I’d gotten at Radioshack were much too large for the purpose we were applying them to, in that it prevented the board from fitting back into the chassis.

Disappointed, but not discouraged, I made another trip to Frys and purchased smaller capacitors of the same value, that would fit the application much better. I should note that these capacitors were roughly half the price of the ones that I’d bought at Radioshack. I swapped the large, Radioshack caps out for the ones I got at Fry’s, and the pedal refused to do anything. I should note that this particular pedal is rather old. The PCB contained within was not very happy to be soldered upon again, and in several cases, desoldering the existing components resulted in faulty, loose, or completely missing pads at the contact points. After freaking out and launching plan B (order parts to build a new pedal), I collected myself, sat down with an exacto knife, and carefully exposed more of the traces on the circuit board. Then I tinned these exposed leads and soldered the components I was adding to the board, to these exposed locations. The pedal sprang back to life, and well, it really didn’t sound all that much better than when I’d started. A little better, but not by that much. Then I moved onto phase two, that is, to take this pedal which I had already modified, and circuit bend it.

I’d read an article about circuit bending the DS-1 while I was looking for information on the Seeing Eye Mod, and it really got me thinking. Most circuit bending is applied to toys or various other electronics, but I had not really seen anyone circuit bend a piece of musical equipment. So, armed with a vague general idea of what I was doing, a SPDT switch, a blazing hot soldering iron, an amp, a guitar, and my good friend Adam Cortez, I got to work. First I selected a point that I thought appeared similar to one I’d seen in the article on circuit bending the DS-1, and then, using another wire, I began trying various points on the board, while Adam played the guitar through the pedal. When we had a point we thought sounded somewhat promising, I would solder the contact, and have Adam play through it while I listened, and twiddled knobs. In a couple cases, the circuit bend made the knobs completely worthless, and/or didn’t really make a signficant enough change in the output of the pedal to really catch my interest. Finally we hit upon the contact which I decided was definitely the keeper, and I soldered it in place. Then I drilled a hole in the enclosure in which to install the switch, put everything in their places, and closed the pedal up. Finally, it was finished.

My current experience of using the pedal in a context involving playing with other people has been mostly positive. The output of the pedal without the circuit bend is a slightly improved sound over the stock DS-1. With the circuit bend, the pedal will output a tone of its own, the pitch of which can be dialed in with the distortion knob. The sound of the circuit bent pedal is pretty well described as “Lightning Bolt in a box”. Notes deteriorate in strange, generally unpredictable ways when they are sustained, and in addition to distorting rather brutally, it also does a heavy mix of pitch shifting. When doubling a part played with a bass player, the effect is pretty outstanding, particularly if the guitar is played in stereo. When in stereo, the guitar, with the pedal on one channel, effectively outputs 2 channels of guitar and 1 of bass, thus when combined with a bass player, the effect is rather huge. When played with only a drummer and another guitarist, the effected guitar does well to cover the guitar and bass parts, though it does best with single note riffs in the guitar’s lower register, and works particularly well in A.

Update: I've used this pedal to much greater effect in the time since I initially constructed it. It can actually be heard in several places on the album my band has been working on, which we should have finished in the very near future. Also, I took a picture of the bottom of the circuit board to try to illustrate where the bend points are. It is incredibly sloppy because when I was replacing the various components, a lot of traces lifted, and I had to make do with what I could. It may be ugly, but it works.