KEELEY
ELECTRONICS
DS-9
REVIEW BY YOEL KREISER
STREET PRICE $149.00
Few people know their dirt
as well as Robert Keeley. An
industry veteran, and one
of the very first builders at
the helm of the boutique
revolution, Keeley got his
start modifying existing
pedals to sound superior
to their stock incarnations.
Keeley has probably seen
the insides of more Tube
Screamers, Blues Drivers,
and RATs than their original
designers! In the past few
years Keeley has moved
past his humble modder
beginnings, taking his
legendary knowledge of
stompbox circuitry and
staunch perfectionism,
and applying it to his own
unique designs. Keeley’s
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GEAR REVIEW
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range has exploded beyond
dirt in the past few years
with the 30ms Double
Tracker and his GC-2
Compressor, but his heart
is still dirty. The latest little
green man off Keeley’s
workbench is the DS-9,
a humble overdrive and
distortion that croons, belts,
and howls.
The DS-9 is a sickly
green, that same green
that is usually identified
with everyone’s favorite
overdrive (eye roll).
Surprisingly, this pedal is
not another clone, but an
interesting hybrid of two
cult classic pedals, the
Maxon SD-9 and Boss DS1. While this may seem like
Keeley Electronics DS-9
an odd pair, Keeley has
packed a whole lot of pedal
into a small and affordable
package. Starting on the
front, we have controls for
Level, Tone, Distortion,
Cutoff, and in the middle
is the switch for changing
between the SD or DS
modes. The Cutoff knob
is essentially two knobs in
one, as it controls the bass
cutoff for the SD and DS.
One of the reasons the
original SD-9 was so loved
(and the main gripe people
had with it), was it didn’t
have that annoying low
end cutoff that the Tube
Screamer had. The main
complaint was however,
that the SD-9 was too