timebaby's Music Gear Setup

When I was playing in a gigging band with a practice space where we could get as loud as we wanted, I had a silver face Fender Bassman head, which I sold to downsize after that band split up. Of course I’ve never forgiven myself. But at least this pedal provides that nice sparkly clean sound at about 1/10th of the price. When I was playing through a cheapo Behringer combo amp that lacked any character, this lived on my board as an always on EQ. Once I upgraded to an Orange, it moved off the board and onto my shelf of studio toys. Still love it to death.

Occasionally I'll pick up a cheapo pedal just to get an idea of whether I want to spend more on a higher end model. This little guy is pretty great. As a preface for everything I'm about to say, I got this for $25.

So as for the main effect, the bitcrushing is pretty good. Not super accurate to what the effect is actually supposed to simulate, but it adds a really great crunch to drum samples.

There's also a very basic ring mod sound, which is fine if you like that effect. I've never had much use for it, but again this is a $25 pedal that does more than just one simple effect.

The switch that simulates an old-timey radio is actually useful. Of course it's essentially just a high pass filter, but I usually find this kind of "lo-fi" effect gimmicky and I actually like this one.

In case I hadn't already mentioned it, this is a $25 pedal. And if you crank it loud enough, you even get a pretty unusual overdrive/distortion. This is a real bargain if you just want to fool around with this sort of effect. Obviously something like the Dr. Scientist Bitquest is going to do a far better job, but this has to be the best value for money I've ever gotten out of a pedal.

There are worse distortion pedals out there than the DS-1, and I know some people think that harshly criticizing any Boss pedal is blasphemy, but the DS-1 just isn't very good. Out of the box, it just feels like you can't push it hard enough to get the sound you actually want. There's no bite in the mid-range, nothing special about the character of the distortion, and out of control noise when you try to compensate for its shortcomings by cranking the volume. Of course a lot of this can be fixed by running it alongside an EQ pedal, but if you have to have a second pedal to make the first one worth playing, that's a bad sign.

Only recommended if you literally can't afford anything else of similar build quality, or if you're a tinkerer and want to do one of the many mods that vastly improve on its stock sound.

Ok, so I'm not really a player who tinkers a lot with volume. The styles of music I play tend to favor extreme tones, whether it's loud, saturated distortion/fuzz, or heavily layered time and modulation effects. I'm not someone who's going to "roll back the volume knob" to clean up a fuzz or an overdrive, because I just don't play the kind of music where that's particularly desirable. When I use this pedal it's basically for doing swells, or turning the volume down in a live setting between songs. The sweep is good enough for those purposes.

I will say that despite feeling like a brick, the teeth on the treadle got loose from the volume pot on mine, and I had to take it apart and reassemble it to get the full sweep back, so maybe the build quality could be better.

If you don't know Danhausen, the pro wrestler whose wacky demon gimmick the pedal is based on, you've probably never heard of this pedal. That's too bad, because it's a great little fuzz, very similar to the Fuzz Factory.

The gimmick is based on the wrestler's catchphrase, "Very Nice, Very Evil." Step on the left switch once and you get a normal, high gain fuzz (very nice) which sounds especially great on bass. Step on it again and you get wild Fuzz Factory-like oscillations and feedback (very evil). The controls for this mode are hidden away inside the pedal, which is an unfortunate design decision, and really the only thing that keeps it from being a fixture on my board.

Since this had a relatively low production run and was basically made only for fans of the wrestler, it's probably not worth shelling out what it costs if you're not also a Danhausen fan (just get a Fuzz Factory), but if somehow you find one on the cheap, it's worth snapping up.