I'm thinking boosts, comp, light overdrives in place of what I have now (distortion, fuzz, comp). My amp has two channels, I keep them both right around breakup and just set the tone differently. I want a pedal to push me a little further into tubey overdrive. I don't need a ton of gain. Just a little sparkly breakup and then a good low-mid gain overdrive sound. I also want something to boost me quite a bit for solos cause mine always seem buried. A little dirt on it doesn't matter. My distortion was too much gain for just a bit of OD and I haven't gotten along with my comp ever.I'm already planning to get a different compressor for light compression sometime in the future though and I definitely don't like to use my current one for boost + compression at the same time.
Will a clean boost get you a good amount of OD without being to loud? Would a light overdrive be better suited for my overdrive tone? And a boost for solos? Cause with all my peds with volume knobs, they just get louder and don't really add much breakup.
How much volume does a pedal need to boost to push you into overdrive? My comp, with the compression low and volume at max doesn't put much dirt on my tone. Should I worry about how many db's they can boost?
What is so special about certain boosts like the SHO or the EP booster? Don't you just want a volume increase?
Do dirty boosts just add grit and not volume like the EQD speaker cranker? Or are there ones that do both?
I would like to keep it simple, as in 1-3ish knobs, maybe. Something I can turn around with my feet, like most one knob boosts probably.
And I know it's a bunch of questions but, boosts, as simple as they are, confuse me. I just don't get it. 
School me on it. What do you use for light gain and solo boosts.Thanks ahead of time!
