The Boss DS-1 is a distortion guitar pedal released in 1978 by Boss. It was the first distortion pedal made by Boss with a distinctive hard-clipping sound perfect for high gain rock and metal still keeping the character of the original guitar. The Boss DS-1 together with the TubeScreamer and the ProCo Rat cover almost all the spectrum of tastes for vintage classic rock/hard rock guitar distortion.
Referring to the electronic design, the current Boss DS-1 has a simple circuit: some transistor stages with an op-amp core and hard clipping diodes. This analysis is focused in the latest pedal schematic revision which is easy to find and prone to modifications.