Just curious mate, for you heavy or hell even slight overdrive do you stick pedals in front of clean channel or use amps overdrive as well.

I recently bought an old Laney pre AOR pro tube lead 50 head. it sounds so hairy and awesome when you push it, but the cleans are beautiful.

All clean channel with the bright switch on. I use a Boss-OD3 for the crunchy, vintage style overdrive, then a MXR distortion + for the litter and thicker drives, then both together to get a really solid, hard rock distortion, then I use a digitech hotrod distortion by itself for any heavy metal and that gets the job done quite well. Why do you ask, bad luck with them before?

I just am always in a pickle over weather to just get another amp for my metal/heavy playing, or work on finding the right pedals for my fender. I love fender amp clean sound, and refuse to have anything else for most rock songs. But when it comes to metal I get worried that my tone is crap because of my running so many pedals.

The only one I really love it my Big Muff Pie, which sounds amazing but has 0 dynamics to t (like most fuzz pedals), so its not really any good for that chug sound.

Fender clean is amazing. Tube I assume? They got awesome reverb too. And hearts to Big Muff, I've always wanted one. There are so many pedals and combinations, I'm sure you can find something to plug into. I know boss makes the ML-2 metal core and the MT-2 Metal zone. Each offer different tones, but they have a wild, hard hitting sound. Best advice is to play around with pedals and look at what other metal musicians use, although you might get a bunch of on-board Marshall responses. I know, crappy advice, but that is how I got where I am. How many pedals are you running and what kind of guitar are you playing? I have an SG with a P-90 that gets a decent metal tone then a Jackson Dinky with a DiMarzio Super 3 that gets a great, heavy tone.

How serious are you? Why not invest in a good tube amp? The best amp for generic "hard rock" is Orange imo. Marshall can be good, too. Peavey (5150, 6505, etc) and Mesa Boogie (rectifier series) are more geared towards metal, for lead guitar. If you plan on gigging than do not go solid state. Than cannot compare when kicked into higher volumes and, and also on the distortion channels.

If you're set up right, most any amp can kick out sounds for any style.