OVERDRIVE PEDAL SHOOT OUT, REVIEW OF IBANEZ JEMINI, BOSS DISTORTION DS-1, SUPER OVERDRIVE SD-1

Hey everyone, today I just want to share a little bit of review about some Boss overdrive/distortion pedals that I currently have in my home right now as well as an Ibanez Jemini distortion pedal and see how they compare to the other pedals that I have reviewed before. These pedals belong to a friend of mine, Anthony Woen (thank you, Ko Awoen).

Ibanez Jemini
Everyone who knows Steve Vai must know that he has a signature distortion pedal called Jemini. It's actually two gain boxes being combined into a single form factor. Can be powered using a single 9V battery or 9V adapter (the battery compartment on the left side is not connected, it's just for spare battery). It has bright and save switch to reduce the LED brightness.

Basically the left side of the pedal is a modified Tube Screamer-ish pedal with some vintage feels but with lots of added low end and boost. It just feels so smooth and even and fat. It doesn't have too much mid hump compared to an original Tube Screamer. I heard that it was based on his modified TS808 by Keeley with some upgraded parts. I used it on a clean channel amp and it sounds wonderful, somewhere between my TS and BB preamp but with lots of low end. Steve probably used it as a boost on his crunch channel.

The right side of the pedal is actually a more straight forward distortion pedal with a lot of gain and presence. It has massive amount of gain, enough to turn your clean channel amp sound into a full stack distortion sound. It too also has huge amount of fatness and boost. It reminds me of an original DS-1 from the '80s which I don't have but heard many times. It has enough of drive to turn your guitar into a metal machine.

BTW, only one side can be turned on at a time, you can't turn both at the same time, I wish it can do that but it doesn't. Sad. But it's still one heck of a good pedal, though.

It's around $199.99, it sounds like two boutique pedals, it's true bypass, it's so colorful, and it's worth the money, like it or not. You got two good sounding boutique drive pedals in just one box, saves a lot of $$$ haha!

Boss Super Overdrive SD-1

A pretty good sounding overdrive pedal from a well-known maker: Boss. It's designed to rival Tube Screamers. It's not a Tube Screamer wanna-be FYI, it sounds different and it acts different. This one is similar like a Boss Blues Driver BD-2, just enough amount of gain without too much presence.

The knobs are pretty responsive and they all pretty straight forward. No nonsense here, just a simple, effective and good sounding overdrive pedal. It's not as fat as a Maxon OD or modified Tube Screamer, but you don't get too much low-end loss from this pedal.

Priced in just below $50.00 in U.S., this thing is a killer for sure. Please note however as with any Boss pedals, they're not true bypass. If you have a couple of them together they're gonna be just fine but if you had a lot of Boss pedals in your signal path, get a buffer pedal to strengthen your original signal, these pedals can cause tone sucking problem if you're not careful.

Boss Distortion DS-1

Similar to the pedal above but with more gain, less midrange and more presence. This is a very basic distortion pedal that already becomes standard for many other distortion pedals. It goes from a very low gain Tube Screamer-ish sound to a massive heavy metal sound with just a turn of a knob.

A very straight forward distortion pedal. Note however that this is not a boutique pedal, it does not have a lot of special things in it. Getting overtone harmonics and plenty of sustain requires more work with this pedal; but if you don't even care about that and just want a basic good sounding distortion pedal, this is a way to go.

It's important to know that lots of pedal makers are using DS-1 as a base to search their own unique sounds. So you can actually cover a lot of distortion sounds from using this pedal. It's priced just below $50 as well and it's not true bypass as I mentioned above. It's worth the price but requires you to be careful when combining this pedal with other non true bypass pedals.

Let the battle begins!
I made a sound clip of all of these distortion pedals being mixed together with my other drive pedals playing a same rock riff over and over but using different pedals.
Here's the order: BB Preamp - Maxon OD9/808 Silver Mod - Jemini Left - Jemini Right - SD1 - DS1 - RC Booster.

They're all being set with tone just before noon, drive between 2 and 3 o'clock and level varied a bit from one pedal to another to adjust the output from my preamp on clean channel. No other pedals are being used...

Here's the link : DISTORTION FIGHT

After you hear the sound clip, you'll see two sides of drive sound: one side is the normal distortion sound, the other side is the overdrive low gain Tube Screamer-ish sound. They're all good but note that some pedals are better for a certain situation while the others might be useful in other situation.

I hope you enjoy this post, thank's to all of you who keeps coming back to my posts! I really hope this post as well as the other posts will help you to find what you're looking for.

Cheers and God bless :)