Why are the knobs on the Boss DS-1 wrongly labelled?

thermionic

I decided to get a Boss DS-1 recently - a cheap classic that had up until now eluded me. Looking at the various Youtube videos I noticed the knobs are labelled differently to the usual Boss standard (OD-3, SD-1, BD-2) of Level on the left, Distortion/Drive on the right and Tone being the small knob in the middle, lower down. Hmmm, I'll have to remember, if I get one, that the Tone and Level knobs are swapped over compared to what I'm used to.

I picked one up at a bargainous price here in the classifieds. As soon as I started playing with it, I realised the left big knob was Level after all and the small middle one was Tone, like the other Boss pedals. I put the mislabelling down to a historical quirk, or a mistake which Boss didn't change.

However, I've just went back to look at a couple of YouTube videos where it's clear that it's the small middle knob which changes the level and tone is the larger left hand knob. So it looks like all the pedals are labelled the same way but some have the knob functions matching while others are "swapped". In all my research about MIJ/MIT versions, all the different mods I could do etc I never caught any mention of this.

Sassafras

That means it's probably worth a fortune to a collector.

gubble

Has someone gone to the immense bother of re-wiring it?

Both of my DS-1's have the tone on the left hand big knob and they both control the tone. ONe is an early one , the other is a very recent one

ICBM

Someone has modded it. All stock DS-1s I've ever played have the knobs corresponding to the labelling.

But I understand entirely why someone would do it, since the tone knob is the one you want to set - very accurately, and then be careful not to knock it - and the level is the one you want to adjust.

gubble

I've always assumed they were different because the tone knob on the DS-1 is so vital in setting the right sound for you that it's the one most often tweaked - therefore is in an easier to reach place.

bloodandtears

if you bought from the classifieds here then perhaps the seller could shed some light??

thermionic

ICBM said:

Someone has modded it. All stock DS-1s I've ever played have the knobs corresponding to the labelling.

But I understand entirely why someone would do it, since the tone knob is the one you want to set - very accurately, and then be careful not to knock it - and the level is the one you want to adjust.

Ah, that thought didn't occur to me, but it makes sense.

I did open it up as soon as I got it, inveterate tinkerer that I am, but don't remember seeing anything that looked like it had been changed. Wires crossing over from a pot to the pcb would have been obvious. It'll be opened up again as soon as I get home!

thermionic

OK then...

The middle ribbon cable (pins 5-7) does indeed go to the pot on the left, which is labelled Tone but actually adjusts the level. The ribbon cables of 5-7 and 8-10 cross over, unlike 2-4, which goes to the Dist pot on the right. Whoever modded this did a rather neat job I must say.

The only problem is the Level is now on a 20K pot when it should be 100K, and the Tone is now on 100K instead of 20K. 

The Level control is a simple voltage divider with the wiper going on to the output, so reducing the value from 100K to 20K means there's less output level range - this agrees with my observations!

The Tone control is basically a mixer panning between the outputs of a high-pass filter and a low-pass filter, my hunch is that upping this from 20K to 100K means that the range won't affect the range of tone available. 

Very interesting! Not sure if I want to mod it back, looks a bit fiddly...

thermionic

Right, I think I've got to the bottom of it. The two large knobs are on smallish round pots while the smaller middle knob is on a very small rectangular-cased pot. So I initially thought someone had swapped the wires - the small knob on the small pot led me to think that the pots had been left in situ, the middle control was a smaller pot for reasons of space (similar to the knob sizing I guess). There is no sign whatsoever of resoldering and the brown goo at either end of the ribbon cables are intact and unbroken. Looking at the values on the pot casings, they are correct - Tone is 20K, Level is 100K. So, disregard my comments about the Level range above!

So, it's very simple - during assembly, someone literally got their wires crossed and inserted the Tone pot into the Level hole and vice versa. At least I won't have to do the tricky soldering!

ICBM

I very much doubt it was at the factory. The workers that assemble those do hundreds a day probably, and when you do that it would be very obvious if you'd crossed over two pots that look different.

They are not the loudest of pedals, that's correct.

gubble

Send it back to Boss and ask for a replacement

to be honest having dealt with their customer services once I'm sure they'd probably do that.