OK, so after a few hours of testing and comparing what I've found is that, as usual, the right sound is in there with this mod, you just have to work it out. Working it out in my case means choosing the right pedal.
Now to put that into perspective let it be known that I'm an old school guy. Hell, at my age I have no choice, and that obviously has played a huge factor in the music I play, and have played for 45 years. So while the long tours are over, the demand for the band still goes on. And it just so happens that music from my era is in very high demand. So let's say you like the Allman Brothers, Cream and soul. Drift back to a day when a pedal in the signal chain was pretty rare, but 50 and 100 watt tube amps were everywhere, and cranked pretty loud because there was NO FOH and covering a few thousand water bags meant the volume needed to be high. Time machine to today and almost any amp over 50 watts is to much rig for the gig, and pedals come into play. How else do you get the tone? You can't depend on being able to crank the amp to power tube saturation and compression so what do you use.
In my case I use, in this order, Peterson tuner, Vox wah, Ross compressor, TS-808, AD-9 delay. I always use channel #1 for clean tones, and channel #2 for grind and more grind Old school tone at it's finest. So when I changed the pots in channel #2 I knew I wouldn't like the sound unless I worked the channel, and I knew I would like the tone more if I could make it work, because I love the clean channel and my goal was to find the clean channel chime and top end, but not so much as to be annoying and piercing when I used the bridge pickup. Think Joe Walsh, Stones, and you'll get the idea. OK, so that sets the stage.
The tests were run using a pair of Lonestars, my pedal board, and a Gibson 1960 historic Les Paul. The tubes in the amp are Mullard NOS and GT 6L6 GEs. Nothing but the overdrive pedal was changed and all other pedals remained untouched.
I started by pulling the TS-808 and working in this $200 pedal by Nick Greer called a Black Betty. It's supposed to be a combo boost and fuzz, but I have had very little luck with it, and the gain is just to way over the top, almost uncontrollable. I gave this pedal about 30 minutes and it is what it is. And through either amp, just another suck pedal.
The next pedal I worked in was a Fulltone OCD. These are great pedals and with the pots in the stock position work very well with the Lonestar. I liked the tone, but there was just to much high end crap floating around when used on the modded LS, not so much when used with the not modded LS. In a pinch I could use it, but just not warm enough.
The third pedal was my original TS-808. It fit right in and after about an hour I had figured out the settings needed to make the modded LS really give up the goods. Just the right amount of boost, warmer but transparent tone and lot's of grind. Moving the gain to about 1pm gave up some great classic tones, sustain and incredible harmonics. This pedal was working fine now that I had learned how to work with the mod, and I actually like the tone and note to note clarity of the mod better. Moving back to the not modded LS confirmed my statements again.
The next pedal was my seldom used, very much loved Klon. The Klon is what it is and the clean boost of this pedal worked very much like the TS-808 except the amp gain had to come up some what more. The 2nd and 3rd order harmonics were outstanding as I expected, and like the TS-808 old school distortion and sustain without power tube saturation (read that as pre amp over drive) was a no brainer. So back into the box for special occasions.
The last pedal I tried was an all but forgotten pedal. I don't really want to talk about this pedal on a web site, but I think you might all find this pedal something to consider. The reason for not wanting to talk about the pedal is simple. They work great, are very inexpensive, but are discontinued and very hard to find. I just don't really want to be unable to find more, even though I own two (2) of them. I dug this puppy out of the box, plugged it in, and smiled. The tone was there, the notes were distinctive, harmonics were great and sustain as good as any pedal on the market. Now you may hear that this pedal is a Klon copy. Be assured that it is not. Like the TS-808, OCD and Klon it does not color my original signal unless I want it to, but it does have very usable high and low tone controls, usable gain unlike the Nick Greer. The pedal can be heard at the link below, and although the OP doesn't really show you all of the aspects of this great little pedal, you'll get the idea. He uses a Tele, but they sound better with a humbucker IMO.
You'll find the video at the bottom of this page.
http://www.guitarsite.com/news/guitarvideo/zoom_pd-01_power_drive_demo/
Well, that's my summation. Working with the modded channel #2 has led me to tone nirvana, and the pedals that suit my style work very well with the mod. My plan is to work with the mod for a while. If I'm happy in a month it will stay, If not it's easy enough to put back the way it was.
Have fun.
