Guardians of the analog
Papi Fuego
- Build Rating
I've had this chip and board for a long time now so I guess it's as good as any time to go ahead and build it. My first guitar pedal was a 1992 boss DS-1 so this has me feeling super nostalgic. I built the newer aion comet with the dual opamps last year and have had a couple versions of the boss pedal over the years. So what's different about this one?
At the beginning (1978), the DS-1 was using the Toshiba TA7136AP preamp IC. This remained unchanged for about 16 years. This version of the pedal is said to have the warmest and best sounding breakup of all the different opamps used after. I would have to agree to a certain extent. These are harder to find these days and are getting expensive. Vintage units with this chip are going for hundreds of dollars. Obviously if you dine the distortion it still sounds like a ds-1 but the beauty of this circuit lies in the 11-3 o'clock range on the gain knob. Mixed with an amp that's compressing or slightly dirty gives the classic dirt sound that this pedal was made for. Of course you can release the bees if that's your thing. Overall I'd say this sounds 20% better than a modern equivalent, not night and day but to those tone chasers (@MichaelW )
It's worth the build.
For the enclosure I went with a matte orange tayda box and UV print. The diodes used are 4148 and bat41 in series to simulate the fv of the original diodes. For my design, I didn't want to just straight copy the other aion comet I built so I went with a whole new look. If you can find this IC, this is the version to build!
At the beginning (1978), the DS-1 was using the Toshiba TA7136AP preamp IC. This remained unchanged for about 16 years. This version of the pedal is said to have the warmest and best sounding breakup of all the different opamps used after. I would have to agree to a certain extent. These are harder to find these days and are getting expensive. Vintage units with this chip are going for hundreds of dollars. Obviously if you dine the distortion it still sounds like a ds-1 but the beauty of this circuit lies in the 11-3 o'clock range on the gain knob. Mixed with an amp that's compressing or slightly dirty gives the classic dirt sound that this pedal was made for. Of course you can release the bees if that's your thing. Overall I'd say this sounds 20% better than a modern equivalent, not night and day but to those tone chasers (@MichaelW )
It's worth the build.
For the enclosure I went with a matte orange tayda box and UV print. The diodes used are 4148 and bat41 in series to simulate the fv of the original diodes. For my design, I didn't want to just straight copy the other aion comet I built so I went with a whole new look. If you can find this IC, this is the version to build!
