You might think you know Boss’s rarest pedals - the SP-1 Spectrum and SG-1 Slow Gear among them - but the scarcest of all are its limited-editions - and they don’t get much harder to find than the gold DS-1 Distortion that’s just gone up for sale on Reverb (opens in new tab).
Just six of these dazzling distortion pedals were produced to commemorate 6,000,000 Boss compact effect units shipped worldwide by 28 February 1998, all of which is etched into the pedal’s footswitch.
Other neat touches include ‘Oct 1977’ and ‘Feb 1998’ in place of the usual input and output labels, harking back to the first-ever Boss compact pedals and the date of 6,000,000 shipped respectively.
The listing, from Portuguese retailer Rui’s Gear Bazaar, notes that the pedal “was only presented to overseas joint venture firms, in honor of their great contribution to Boss sales”.
It goes on to say that, “In general, replicas of this model often lack the function of the original, but the insides of this DS-1 are exactly the same as the original.
“In other words, if you plug in a guitar, it'll give you distortion.” Well, that’s good to know.
Given the rarity of these pedals, the price is certainly at a premium: you’ll need to fork out $7,025/£5,416 for the honour of owning this one - a far cry from the $/£49 the pedal usually demands.
