Re: I think I hate my Fender.
I'm going to go in a different direction here. I think you might have a bad preamp tube.
I think on the DRRI, you'd want to swap in a new tube in the V2 position (if you're using the Vibrato channel) and see if that makes an improvement. Sometimes a bad preamp tube might not be noticeable until the amp is cranked up loud, OR...you run a buzz box into it and stress it. Ten to fifteen bucks on a new tube is an easy experiment and it might be a cheaper, better investment than a new speaker at this point.
Usually Fenders take pedals very well, but I have noticed every now and then, there's a pedal that WON'T work worth a damn with a particular amp-- and, I seemed to have a knack for finding them. LOL. So, if you are using a bunch of boutique pedals, you might try taking your amp into a store where you could try some mainstream pedals....TS-9, Boss OD or BD, EHX, MXR, etc., just to see if you have better results.
Another thing to consider, would be that with this particular amp, there's something amiss in the ORDER of the pedals. This actually happened to me, back in the day when I had a Marshall JCM 800 and a Fender amp. The Fender amp didn't care whether the distortion was before or after the wah--but the Marshall sure did. Take a few minutes to do some switching around and see if that makes a difference.
And be sure to check out the pedal interconnects too. Make sure you're cables are good quality, and making good contact.
Finally, you might want to look into getting a clean boost pedal. I started using an old DOD FX-10 Preamp on my board years ago when I was using a solid state amp. The extra little bit of boost really warmed up the amp and made it more tube-like, which I needed since I was playing at very low volumes. I certainly don't need the extra gain since I started using Mesa amps back around 1994, but I've kept it as the first pedal on my pedalboard, to add just a slight amount of always-on boost. The right boost pedal can keep your cleans clean, fatten up your tone and make your dirt boxes work better.
It just seems to me that you have some sort of compatibility problem with the pedals you're using and your amp. If your amp sounds good straight into it; if your pedals sound good into another amp, then there's something in the chain that's causing it all to not work together. Maybe you have one too many buffers, or maybe one not enough, or one in the wrong spot. Sometimes if you have a board full of true-bypass pedals, adding a buffer can work wonders. (And sometimes buffers don't play nice with each other, either.)
I have dealt with this issue in the past, and I know it's no fun. I don't know all the electric technical mumbo-jumbo--I just know that it takes a bit of "magic dust" to make it all work.
And when it does, when you have the RIGHT combination, it's...well, MAGICAL!
Good luck, let us know what you figure out.
Bill
