Trying to Understand Interaction with boost/gain Pedals

[JustMike]

Referencing a Deluxe Reverb.
So a Tube Screamer pedal into a clean Deluxe sounds horrible-like a fuzz on top of a clean signal. But as we turn the volume up things start to sound better.
I'm learning this stuff, so bear with me. input goes thru fixed gain stage V1a, then the tone stack ( I guess we can call this a fixed unity gain filter? obviously, we're losing some gain here), then the volume control which determines the rest of the signal thru the 2nd gain stage, PI & output section.
 I guess my point is this; the first gain stage has such high headroom that even when the TS is set for maximum output, it's not causing the 1st stage to distort and the magic of boost pedals really takes place later on in V1b etc.
 So we're actually enhancing the TS with a 2nd gain stage (V1a) and the tone stack before we get to amp gain & clipping? Right?

[shooter]

scope it, guessing what or why electrons isn't very satisfying 

[Madkrafter]

I don’t know about the technical details either but have been watching That Pedal Show on YouTube. Just today Dan mentioned how much he always hated his Telecaster through a Tube Screamer. Another episode talked about everything before the amp and pedals - pickups, input impedance and their effect on tone. Have you tried switching guitars? Same bad tone? Cheers.

[HotBluePlates]

Referencing a Deluxe Reverb.
So a Tube Screamer pedal into a clean Deluxe sounds horrible-like a fuzz on top of a clean signal. But as we turn the volume up things start to sound better.

... input goes thru ... then ... then ...

Lots of things to parse here.

• The nature of a Tubescreamer is "fizz on top of clean signal" as that's how the pedal is architected.  So you're never going to get away from that if you're running an amp clean and relying on the Tubescreamer for all the dirt.
• Don't use the Tubescreamer on the Vibrato channel of the Deluxe Reverb, unless you've clipped the bright cap out of the DR, or you've got your DR's Volume control somewhere between 7-10.  The 47pF bright cap passes the "Fizz" portion of a distorted signal around the Volume control, and the effect is more-intense as you turn the DR Volume control down.  I've got a 1964 DR and am about to go unsolder the bright cap after a few years of making myself try to work around it.
• A lot of dirt pedals fail to deliver a pleasing distortion sound on their own. Instead, they often sound best driving an amp that's already on the edge of breakup, or stacked with another dirt pedal, so the harsh edges tend to get filled-in.
• A lot of folks get a Tubescreamer and think they'll have instant SRV, but don't use the pedal (and especially their amp) like SRV did.  See the video below for how to do it, and how not to do it.

https://youtu.be/wJ8UMHODKuU?t=130

So if nothing else, you really need that amp to be LOUD and ready to give up the goods on its own to get the best from a Tubescreamer-type pedal.

I don’t know about the technical details either but have been watching That Pedal Show on YouTube. Just today Dan mentioned how much he always hated his Telecaster through a Tube Screamer. ...

Dan uses a guitar with mids (Tele) into amps with mids (lots of Vox-style amps).  A Tubescreamer is mid-boosted, and better for amps that have scooped mids (like blackface/silverface Fender amps), which is where Mick usually winds up (even if he's playing through a Two Rock, the basic sound is scooped like a mid-60s Fender amp).

[Joncaster]

   

• The nature of a Tubescreamer is "fizz on top of clean signal" as that's how the pedal is architected.  So you're never going to get away from that if you're running an amp clean and relying on the Tubescreamer for all the dirt.

True that.
I hear what these style pedals really do when I listen to them on headphones through a clean Roland Cube.
In my Fuzz and BMP builds, I use that amp to tune everything, and when they go into a proper cranked amp, they blend really nicely.
I approach it from a mix engineering point of view, so everything needs to translate well.

I think a better pedal topography for clean amps might be a cascaded overloading type, before a diode clipper one.
It's hard to get a really cohesive overdrive from a single clipping stage, and when you clip hard and soft in sections, you start getting blurry.
One of the nicest overdrives I got on the breadboard was sending the input to an opamp spring tank recovery stage by accident. Instant Octave Fuzz.