the ds-1 provides decent crunch. nothing overwheming. not real saturated. good to use in conjunction with an amps distortion channel for a bit of a boost. the ch-1 is a decent chorus. pretty standard. but choruse can be a pretty standard effect in general. not a whole lot of differences between manufacturers that i have seen. and there are tons of them on the 'BAY for around $30...

I have both and am happy with them. As BachMirage says, to an extent, a chorus is a chorus. The DS-1 I find does give a lot of white noise on single coil pups and can have a harsh tone but when sweet it's pretty sweet. Quite good for a funky rock - John Fru' style.

Saying that I'm thinking of getting the DS-2 Turbo Distortion and if it's anygood it may superseed my DS-1... I'll keep you posted.

although some might argue, I have to say Boss in general are a good brand for pedals. Built like tanks and not many professional artists out there are not using at least one Boss pedal in their rig.

The DS-1 is not the most saturated of distortion pedals but there are lots of classic songs out there that owe their distorted tones to the DS-1. Ultimately it's up to you what you like and if it suits your needs or not. Joe Satriani used one for quite some time if I recall and so did Kirk Hammet and James Hetfield in Metallica's early days.

As for the chorus, I have to agree with bachmirage and microcuts... most cases, a chorus is a chorus; they usually don't sound much different from one brand to the next.

One exception in my opinion was the old Zoom pedals from the early to mid 90's before they started to concentrate almost exclusively on multi-effects. I wish they still made them or that I could at least find one used somewhere. These were the ulitimate chorus pedals in my opinion and I've yet to see anything that comes close.

The DS-1 won't give you real heavy distortion. In my rig, I use it as a boost. If you look at my rig pics you can see roughly where I use it. My purpose for it is to boost the gain on my CLEAN channel. Because I only use it for that purpose, I run it AFTER my pre amp (or effects loop out) and right before a hush pedal and the power stage (or effects loop in). It allows me to take what is essentially a 3 channel amp (clean, drive, more drive) and make it a 4 channel amp. It has great crunch for classic rock and is a very good lead boost pedal for when you have to cut through the mix. I am going to buy another ($20-$30 online used) and modify it to the Keely "seeing eye" and "ultra" mods. These mods are what Steve Vai had done and they are not hard to do if you take your time. www.fuzzcentral.tripod.com
The CH-1 is not bad at all. I used one for a while. Now I have a POD XT LIVE and actually use the stomp effect modeled after that pedal. Most chorus effects are the same. Not much noticeable difference in a live setting.

As far as Boss goes. My BR1200CD has the BOSS GT-6/GT-6B multi effects unit built in. I love it when adding to the song, but when I'm playing through ye old amp, I don't use many effects.

Back in the day, Boss pedals were the pedals to have. They still make good stuff, but they've lost their "king of the bunch" reputation. Are they good? Yes! Could there be better stuff from other manufactures? Definitely!