I must have bought my DS-1 twenty years ago, and it was long neglected, but when comparing all my pedals I decided this was the only one that let my playing subtleties show through. Many pedals today are obsessed with ultra high gain, which makes you sound anonymous. Here, you get distortion that begins with a mild crunch near to your clean signal, and moves to a searing sound. The tone knob goes from a dark thick sound to a bright, thinner and progressively less bassy one. I am slightly amazed at how many good combinations I can get by adjusting these two knobs, and moving from the neck pickup to the bridge on a Strat. Try Tone = 11 O' clock with Gain all the way down, or Tone all the way down with Gain = 1 O' clock; two very different and useable sounds. Sometimes I wish the pedal had a little more bass response to it, and you can forget rich tube-y harmonics, but then the idea is to get a brighter, more cutting sound, so I can't really complain. I play rockabilly, '50s style rock 'n roll and Hendrix/Trower type stuff, so this suits me just fine. (And it's a standard platform for modification if you want to experiment). Recommended.