As you might remember I received a NOS long-dash silver screw DS-1 in timewarp condition
in June. It is such a rare treasure and until this day this unit has not been stomped or touched by a foot. And I want to keep it that way.
The sound is awesome! All the years I really disliked the DS-1 and I wondered why it had such a legendary status. In the music shop that I worked in until 2018 we had modern units of the DS-1 and I thought that they sounded terribly. Eight years ago I bought a Taiwanese black label DS-1 and it was way better, but still not satisfying for me. And then this long-dash version fell into my laps and now I know why members like
dasbeef were raving about them.
A few days ago I could hardly believe my luck, because I was able to buy another long-dash silver screw DS-1 from the German ads ("kleinanzeigen") for merely 35 EUR plus shipping and fees. 44.77 EUR in total! It is only a month younger (#9200) than my other pristine unit and it sounds exactly the same.
Laurie had to help me (thanks again so much!) to find a fault, because after the cleaning the DIST knob didn't work anymore and the effect was stuck in minimum gain. It turned out to be a non-visible broken conductive path - when I desoldered an electrolytic capacitor, the solder eye of one side came off, revealing the broken part of the circuit. Easy fix once that was clear. I was really perplexed, because the pedal did properly work at arrival. The connection must have gotten loose when I opened the pedal.
But it is perfectly working now. And it doesn't look too bad. But it is not in absolute perfect optical condition as the other one, so now I have a great sounding DS-1 that I dare to stomp on stage. Yeah!
