Overdrive/Gain pedal that cleans up nicely with the guitar volume?

Exorcist

Is there such a thing? I'm sure I heard somewhere that mosfet OD's clean up well, is that true - and are there any good ones? I enjoy noodling around controlling the gain with the guitar volume, my old Fuch's gain channel was particularly good for that - but I'm currently using a very clean amp, and getting my gain from pedal's, and none of them really clean up like a decent amp OD. Youtube pedal demo's never seem to do demonstrate what happens when you roll back the guitar volume. 
So - basically I'm after some recommendations. Ideas from mild OD to quite Gainy Dist are all good and give me the next thing to research
I'm sure some of you have been through an ungodly amount of gain pedals, so your opinions would be greatly appreciated.

Beexter

Boss Blues Driver does this fantastically well. 
Blackstone Mosfet Overdrive is good too as is the Barber Gain Changer 

Exorcist

Thanks @Beexter that's a  good starter for 10 - The Blues driver seems to get a lot of love so I'll definitely give one a try.

simonk

I’m not really using pedals so much these days but I’ve had stacks of them over the years. The various Barber OD’s I’ve had have been very toneful and always cleaned up very well. The Skreddy Hybrid Fuzz Driver also sticks in my mind as bing very volume knob sympathetic.

bbill335

The best for this is the Hudson Broadcast

Exorcist

Thanks, I've had a listen to some clips of the hudson, and it sounds a bit too 'fuzzy' if that makes sense. I guess that's the germanium transistor? 
@simonk can you remember which barbers, would it have been the direct drive?
More suggestions welcome, the research is half the fun :-)

Aidanspaghetti

Go for the Blues Driver as its cheap and you'll flip it easily if its not your thing! Wonderful sounding pedal inmto certain amps.

TTBZ

Not exactly high gain but the Soul Food does this well - can leave it as an "always on" pedal if you want and still clean up with guitar adjustments. 

The Catalinbread stuff seems to clean up really well based on the videos I've seen - pretty sure there's a whole video by them for the DLS Mk3 where he talks about the "hidden tone control" or something which is the guitar volume.

simonk

Exorcist said:

Thanks, I've had a listen to some clips of the hudson, and it sounds a bit too 'fuzzy' if that makes sense. I guess that's the germanium transistor? 
@simonk can you remember which barbers, would it have been the direct drive?
More suggestions welcome, the research is half the fun :-)

I’ve enjoyed all of them... they’re generally underrated it seems. The Direct Drive and Ltd are both great in their various versions. Two that really stick in my mind are the 1/2 Gainer and Dual Unlimited. I gigged those loads, always into a clean amp and apart from fuzz tones they gave me all the gain I needed.
He seems to have scaled back production these days which is a shame, but the Gain Changer would be a good and versatile place to start.

ICBM

The 'Natural Overdrive' setting on the Boss ME-50 does this extremely well. Probably not helpful if you're looking for a single pedal...

stickyfiddle

Not sure if you can get them in the UK, but the Anarchy Audio Gold Class does it really nicely. It's my current "never going to sell this" pedal.

kurtrowe2000

The best OD I’ve ever used is my Maxon VOP9.  

Voxman

MI Audio crunch box/super crunch box and even the inexpensive but highly under-rated Marshall Guvn'r2 clean up very nicely with guitar volume.  

vasselmeyer

The Catalinbread DLS pedals do this really well. Also the Subdecay Liquid Sunshine is pretty good for using like this. I think the LS uses MOSFETs. 

timbuk02

MI Effects Crossover drive does it brilliantly, uses cascaded jfets. The cleans are nice and chimey too. Checkout the YouTube demo by bergs as he does do the volume knob thing justice

siraxeman

Dano TOD (mk1) does the job very well IMO.

Exorcist

Thanks guys, plenty of ideas here for me to check out, I'll be wasting away the hours on youtube later! Feel free to add any more if you think of them, If it helps, I'm generally P90's and HB's at the moment rather then single coils (I know P90's are single coils, but you get my meaning)

p90fool

My default pedal for unknown borrowed amps or totally clean amp applications is still the Nobels ODR-1

It works really well with stubborn amps like silverface Fenders and you can set it almost exactly like the clean amp and then increase the gain to taste. 
That characteristic alone makes it clean up very naturally from the guitar, and they're stupidly cheap even new. 

They were the Nashville overdrive of choice for two decades for a reason. 

longshins

I know you said overdrive but if you plug straight into a fuzz face type pedal your volume knob has a drastic effect.

Ro_S

EQD Crimson Drive.  it's transistor based. no opamp.

TJT1979

Surprised nobody has mentioned the Sweet Honey Overdrive (or clones such as Tone City Sweet Cream, Joyo Sweet Something).

This pedal is often mentioned as the best in terms of cleanup and dynamics.

If you can solder, look at Fuzzdog's Bee Juice kit! I will be building one soon.