But holy cow there are a ton of OD pedals out there today!
Yeah, but most of them are really just TubeScreamers. Maybe they used some fancy mojo nos components or hand wired it on turret board or made it true bypass, but it's still just a TS. The differences between most of them are about the same as turning a knob or two just a touch.
I personally can't stand the things. I keep trying from time to time because everybody seems to dig them for one thing or another, but there is almost never a time when a TS style OD actually gets me a tone I'm looking for. Most people seem to run them with the knobs most of the way down in order to get a bit of a boost without incurring quite so much of the tonal damage the pedal is capable of. At that point, though, why not just grab a clean boost, or even some EQ pedal with gain?
I've got a Boss HyperFuzz which actually might not be a bad suggestion if you really are grabbing a tube amp. I only ever use the clean boost, with just a touch of shaping from the EQ knobs, but it also has two pretty usable transistor based fuzz modes for when you want to get a little freaky. It's not some vintage fuzz face, but it's pretty versatile.
I've always been a Rat kinda guy myself. It is true that this style of circuit clips off the signal right around 1V, but that's like the peak of a loudish strum on most louder guitars, only the Rat can make most of the sustain that loud also, so if your amp was on the edge of breaking up before, it'll be working pretty hard now. But there is also the TurboRat thing, which gets about twice as loud. Either way, I never really thought the point of putting a distortion pedal into an already raging amp is to do anything good to the sound, but rather to make it all that much worse.