Boss DS1W Distortion Wasa Craft

[Dinosaur David B]

To me, it just seems to have a little more hair on it. I already have a DS-1, and the ONLY reason I'd run a DS-1 would be to try and get the Rockschool Gary tone from a SC Strat. What the original needs most (IMO) is NOT more hair. It needs some noise reduction or a gate. 
 

[Stitsel]

Really....

I'm surprised the WAZA pedals don't have the noise issue resolved.I have an old SD-1 pedal & it sounds killer but the heinous hissing makes it almost unbearable, without a gate. It's funny, when I was younger & playing that pedal through my JCM800 1/2 stack, I never noticed it, but I sure notice it now. I have no need for these pedals anymore, really....my JVM is a 12 trick pony so to speak but I digress. 

All these BOSS WAZA Craft "boutique" (expensive, for BOSS)  pedals should have the noise thing gone, I would hope.

[Dinosaur David B]

It's funny, when I was younger & playing that pedal through my JCM800 1/2 stack, I never noticed it, but I sure notice it now. 

 

It was always noisy.  I keep going back to this:


You can hear the phaser or flanger sweeping in the background throughout the video. And once he kicks on the DS-1, he's controlling the added noise with his hands through playing and muting. The second he stops playing, he rolls the volume off on the Strat. This was common with distortion pedals of those days.

Hoffmann told me:
If you cranked the Marshall all the way to 10 or to 7 or 8, you could use the (MXR) Distortion Plus' Output control to regulate the Marshall's volume so that you could bring it down to a volume you could actually play with. In essence you have a master volume effect — the amp is still sweating, but you can control the volume. The Distortion control was set not all the way up, but almost all the way up. You can still do it today. The only bad part is you get a lot of noise. We always had to turn down the volume immediately if there was a break.

But I'm still not convinced it was AS bad in those days because circuits from 30/40 years ago -- whether in pickups or pedals -- were never designed to deal with the level of electronic interference we have these days. Either that, or we've all gotten used to much quieter options (like stacked SCs), so these vintage things really stick out like a sore thumb. 

I wonder if one could actually build a noise gate into something like a DS-1 and have it retain the original character? Guessing it would be a similar compromise to stacked SCs.  And as I learned in my old home studio, even noise gates can't defeat a truly awful environment where the wiring and grounding is suspect and you're surrounded by computers, screens, and cell phones. Even HBs are noisy in those environments. 
 

[Stitsel]

Huh, I never thought of all those other factors you just mentioned, but you are correct.....it could be one of the reasons why the whole noise gate thing has kinda spiraled off into it's own sub-category, as in....there's lots of companies making them now. Which is the best? I dunno. I hear really good things about the ISP Decimator.Remember when all you could really get way back when, were the old Rocktron Hush units? Rack or stomp, that was it for a minute.... 

I myself use a simple BOSS Noise Suppressor, & ....ehhhhh it works so so, I suppose, but that's probably more my convoluted signal chain routing than anything.I'm using the L6 M13 4CM into the JVM, that's a clusterfuck right there. I only notice noise on the OD2 channel, so I kinda slapped that BOSS pedal on at the end of the chain, before the amp input....maybe I'm doing it wrong.

Anyhow, I watched the vid & that guy does a pretty decent job of clearly explaining it & demonstrating it too, it sounded pretty good I thought, and I didn't detect any noise or hear him mention it either. 

I have a few old cool OD/Distortion pedals that sound killer, but they're just so damn noisy. The DOD YJM surprised me; it's actually a badass, killer sounding overdrive, very ballsy & hi gain....but just noisy AF. Ditto the aforementioned SD-1. Same with the Sabbra Cadabra, and also the Amptweaker Tight Metal, & it's got a built in noise gate !! Wtf guys. The MXR 10 Band KFK EQ pedal is great too, but noisy too.The Metal Zone sounds fine however.

Again, I would hope those hi end BOSS pedals are dead quiet.

A funny story: back around 2008 or so, Satch had just signed on with VOX for his line of pedals....his OD, his Distortion, wah & delay I believe ....
He did an in-store appearance at a local Seattle GC, where he jammed for about a 1/2 hr then did a meet & greet where you could buy his new LP "Professor Satchafunkilus and the Musterion of Rock" ( this was totally unexpected; I had no idea he had a new album out so this was fun ) .......anyhow, I heard later that he was pissed at his Saturator pedal for the hissing, I couldn't really tell as I was far back in the crowd, loud PA etc., but I heard he wasn't happy. You'd think if you were lucky enough to develop a pedal w/a legend such as Joe, you wouldn't F that up. 
 
 

[eduardoritos]