Here's one for you...Good sounding OD's at low amp volumes...

Right up my alley...

MI Audio Blue Boy
Timmy
Xotic AC Booster
Hermida Mosferatu
Keeley TS-9/808 Plus Mod

All of these pedals did great at low volumes, IMO - but the ones I kept were the Blue Boy and the Timmy, just sounded best with my rig.

 

Reverend Drivetrain.

And that's all I have to say about that.

 

Is that the older black box version DT or the DT2? I owned a DT2 and loved it, but I really had to open it up volume-wise to get to the good stuff - I ultimately replaced it with the Timmy for low-volume stuff...

 

maxon d&S II if you want that just broken up sound...good bass response and added highs if you need them.

 

Blackstone OD... very good with a clean amp. Sort of like a second (and third) channel.

 

eternity its fat ,smooth and huge

 

At low vol I like the AC Booster.

 

Hermida Audio Zendrive
Hermida Audio Mosferatu
Clay Jones Overdrive
Love Pedal Eternity
Fulltone OCD

 

Zendrive
BJF Honey Bee

 

Blackstone here, too.

 

cjod

 

Another vote for Lovepedal Eternity.

Tonebone Classic is my favorite low volume distoriton. Wait, no the Eternity is... wait, I'm not sure. Love both though! Well I have 11 OD, distortion and dig all of them for low volume but these 2 are the best.

 

bump : it's my tone quest too (bedroom warriors united !)

 

I was pretty psyched when they announced the DT2 but when I got one I was less than impressed. The DT2 is a great pedal, a lot more range in the Drive and Volume controls. I'm just a big fan of the original. Both pedals however are starting to climb in price.

 

I got a very early production DT2 that had been velcro'd by the previous owner, so the text on the underside's obliterated. Were they US made? Amazingly low price, if so.

I did the mod (tech bulletin #5 on the website) and thought it was a substantial improvement. Well worth doing & very simple, too.

To get back on topic, my opinion's that most overdrive pedals (every one that I've owned, anyway) tend to sound pretty good at livingroom levels.

It's when you run them thru' a big amp at stage volume that many of them fall short.

My 3 current faves seem to hold up at ANY volume, and they've all been mentioned in this thread; ZenDrive, HoneyBee & Eternity. They each cover different (occasionally overlapping) ground, and are all on the same pedalboard.

 

For a pedal to feel right at low volumes for me, it needs to compress the signal a bit, otherwise I'm stuck with a hard, sterile attack. At low volumes this gain compression is a real benefit, but when an amp is opened up, too much pedal compression can detract from the feel of the interaction of the tubes and speakers being pushed. So as a general rule, The lower the volume, the more compressed I like my gain pedals to feel and vice-versa.

As an apartment dweller, I've been working on my low-volume home rig for many years. The latest evolution involves:

Lovepedal COT50---> J.T. Pedals Valveboy od-->t.c. dual parametric eq.

This pedal stack gives me very a nice round, chewy gain tone at very low levels. The COT50 is set very low, but adds some real magic to to the presence and feel of the attack. It also sweetens the Valveboy which already sounds pretty nice. I run into the lead channel of the VB with the gain backed down to 11:00. The t.c. para-eq is very handy for low level playing. It lets me compensate for the speaker and power tubes in my Princeton not being pushed and lets me push and pull the mids to give the illusion of a big loud amp, but at neighbor friendly levels.

As for single pedals, the Jersey Girl, Fulltender works well for me also with both boosts up, but can get a bit noisy.

 

In my experience, the Keeley Phat Blues Driver is perfect for this application. Just my $0.02 US.

 

I just bought an AC Booster tonight at Indoor Storm. While there I checked out the BB Preamp. It was very cool, too. I'm becoming an Xotic-fobe. I also really like my Zendrive at low volumes.