I'll use pedal distortion for convenience.
If I had tons of money and a road crew I would much rather have several amps set exactly how I would need them, one clean, one blazing, and the others set in between. Since I don't have that luxury I just like having one great sounding clean tube amp with 3 or more dirt boxes in front of it, now I'm using 2 OD's and a Fuzz and with that combo I can get an incredibly wide range of tones suitable for anything I need to play.
please tell me you don't do this with the deliverance.
My main distortion is my D60. Wouldn't got the amp if that wasn't the case. I do however, when I need crystal clear spring water, cool breeze on a warm summer night cleans drop all the amount gain close to zero. I've found I can get a decent cleaned up sound dialing down on my guitar volume, but I still have a lil bite. So for a song when I need absolute clean, I do it this way and use a tubescreamer or my Keeley DS1 for distortion (until all clean is over and I can tweak my amp).
When talking about OD boxes it's very important to know that they fall into two very different categories: the type that goes in front of a clean amp (Boss OD-1 type), and the type that goes in front of an overdriven amp (Tube screamer type). A Maxxon OD-9 won't sound all that good in front of a clean amp because that is not what it is designed for. In front of an overdriven sound though...it can't be beat.
I was messing with this question again the last few weeks. I have come to the point where I really like the Marshall Silver Jubilee and don't really want to play anything else for distortion. I tryed putting a pedal in front of my JTM45 but I really like the that amp straight in: Guitar> loud amp>speakers. Pedals left me cold. I have tried some pedals but I havn't found one that holds a candle to the Jub. Maybe I havn't found the right pedal but that's the problem with pedals I guess. And why bother?
I'm in pretty much the same boat. I've had a Jubilee 2555 as my main amp since 2001 and I've tried a bunch of different amps, pedals, and rack gear. I keep coming back to the Jube because nothing else really does it for me. I have serious GAS for the new 2525H because 100W is just too much for most places these days.
Just amp distortion for me. I have not found an amp/pedal combo that suited me.