I recently had the opportunity to try out a Danelectro distortion/overdrive pedal with my gear, and loved the way it sounded through my processor. It belongs to a friend of mine, who has trouble getting decent sound out of it through his own rig. I've also tried a wah pedal in-line before my processor, sounds way better and more amp-like than the one that's on my processor. Long story short, I'm buying several effects pedals today or tomorrow to compensate for some of the effects on my processor that are sub par. I've been considering doing this for a while now, and decided to go for it.

However, I'm having trouble finding a good distortion. Most of it out there sucks horribly, imo. What I want is something with a nice balance of highs & lows, and isn't all noise with no tone. I don't want deafening highs either. I want it to be crunchy when I play rhythm, yet warm when I play leads. At the moment, this is the closest to the tone I want, but it seems to be missing something. I don't really know what's out there as far as analog stuff since I've been using digital effects processors since I started playing. Well, almost. If I get a chance, I'll upload a clip of my style of tone to give you an idea.

Boss SD-1, coupled with your amp's punchy clean sound or crunchy overdrive will sound AWESOME. Probably one of the most popular overdrive pedals ever, along with the Ibanez Tubescreamer (another one you should be looking at, especially for the creamy leads).

I have a MXR Zakk Wylde OD, which basically sounds like a hot-rodded SD-1. I ****ing love it, and I consider it one of my best guitar purchases, ever.

I set my Hughes and Kettner amp on clean with the drive almost all the way up, with the ZW OD in front. To play smooth and clean, I turn the volume down on the guitar. Punchy clean or articulate finger picking, volume full-on. Rhythm guitar, clean channel along with the overdrive. Nice and gainy but with a ton of definition and dynamics. For leads, the distortion channel with the overdrive. More smooth and compressed-sounding.

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I use the Boss SD-1 with the 2nd channel on my amp Gain all the way up. You get a really great sound. Not too heavy, you can hear the individual notes in the chords, and you can dial in the sound either on the amp or on the stomp.

Usually, I only use my amp's 2nd channel, but if I need extra treble boost, I use the SD-1 for that.

My lead guitarist uses a Tube Screamer and a Big Muff. You should check out that combo as well.

Big Muff Pi USA, Boss DS-1,DS-2, Boss Metal Zone, and most recently a new digitech Distortion Factory have all been great. If you're looking for something cheap which is going to give you a real range of tone, at the same time "manipulation-ability", the Distortion Factory is suprisingly a good buy. Retails for around $70, and has something like 7 or 8 distortion models, with the ability to tweak each one how you please, sounds great too.

Listened to some clips, I love it too! Actually has a decent middle range.

I'd seriously skip out on the modelling stuff at this point. You're already planning on running this pedal into a modeller, don't go running a digital distortion pedal into it.