This is a great pedal for hard rock, and alternative styles. I love it.
It's the only pedal that gave me a great MAIN crunch sound that rival
kills my $2000 head. This pedal gives me MY SOUND. Not just another
distortion pedal... truly one that will do down in history.
I bought this pedal after reading A review of it in Guitar
Player mag. They gave it a 5-star rating and the Editor's Pick Award. I
find the review to be pretty accurate. This pedal is transparent. I can
clearly hear my clean signal coming through with the pedal on. The
pedal just adds distortion. It's a pretty basic, generic distortion,
but I like that. It sounds similar to the distortion of a Rat pedal,
except it never gets compressed like the Rat. Like the GP review said,
it retains clarity very well. With the gain maxed, which is where I set
it, you can hear each note of any chord clearly ring out. It has good
sustain. The pedal is very versatile too, although I mostly use it for
one setting. But you can set the distortion to 0 for what the manual
calls "no distortion". What this does to my tube amp is pretty cool. It
makes it sound like I've got my Deluxe Reverb turned up to about 6 on
the volume. In other words, it drives the tubes a bit. Very "tubey"
sounding. This is a sweet "clean boost". I play hard/alt./pop rock and
I basically have two sounds; clean and distorted. The DS830 does what I
want it to do. That is, molest my nice clean tone while still leaving
it recognizable. There's alot of bass on hand. It's pretty tight. too.
I crank the treble all the way. I find it to be too "distant" and muddy
anywhere before 9 on the dial. But it sounds good maxed. Nice crisp,
cutting highs. The treble knob really changes the sound alot from 9 to
10 on the dial. This made me a little uneasy, but I don't desire more
treble from it either. For a transistor distortion pedal, this thing's
got to be right up there with the best.
Sound Quality:
10
Up until now I've gone effect free, but my band is
starting to get into some heavier music and I needed some chunk. The
DS830 provides me with a nice, tight, punchy bottom and more aggressive
attack without the silly scooped mids so popular in the "metal pedals"
that are making every band sound the same - this is metal w/no cheese!
Sound Quality:
10
Let me tell you... this is hands down the
fattest,
most transparent box in the entire world. The first time I plugged into
my board my drummer just about pissed himself. You can hear every note
I play in a chord... and you can still get big muff mud... by the
way... I sold my big muff to get this... and it does everything I
wanted the big muff to do... as well as plexi esque sounds... mesa
recto chomp... and even nice semi clean boost. I will never take this
off my board.
