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Instead of quoting a billion things, I honestly haven’t thought about using just a straight up clean boost at all and that seems like the first thing I should’ve done.

Definitely gonna try a Waza MT-2 because that low gain mode is dope.

Klones are on my list, I had an ARC wth the bass contour that I liked a lot for a while.

EQD Bellows is also really cool !

Zvex Channel 2 any good? Someone is selling one on the cheap near me and I’ve been debating this... wasn’t sure about low end loss or anything

Low end loss is fine for high gain stuff. I kind of consider Meshuggah to be the bench mark for down tuned high gain buzz saw, and if you really listen they definitely cut lows. That upper mids really adds to the gnarl

I'd start with the EQ in the loop. Just try something cheap off of craigslist and see where it gets you.

SLX is one of the best JCM 900s but there are so many mixed feelings about it that it's hard to find good recommendations.

Tube Screamer and its ilk are some of the safest bets for easy to flip (or just return, who cares). I'd just buy some shit from Amazon, see what sticks and return the rest if you don't have a good way to otherwise test shit.

Stuff I use to boost my high gain amps:

Zoom Power Drive - transparent-ish (has been compared to the Klon forever but I don't think it's actually a klone), nice eq, generally sounds great with anything, indestructible and hella cheap
MF Boost - saturates and colors more, especially in OTA mode, makes pretty much everything feel better and more responsive, I usually use it to fill in the edges on my Deliverance 120
Emma Onomatopoeia - pretty dry and tight on its own, raw compared to most others and takes some dialing in but definitely voiced in a way that makes everything sound like old records, it's paired with my Marshally amp to shift the voice around and add extra nasty, also dirt cheap used
Xotic RC Booster - TS without the typical asymmetric clipping setup + Bax EQ, somewhat similar to boosting with a regular TS but cleaner, less congested and the EQ is very usable, first version is pretty cheap now that v2 is out

Deliverance 120 is awesome.
My grief with the VHT/Fryette and Mesa Amos is the goddamn parallel fx loops. Was literally a weekly battle with my Dual Rectifier.

I pretty much only run delay/verb in loops, so parallel works fine for me most of the time. I've been thinking about sending mine in to get the Deliverance II mods done, as mine is super early serial # and doesn't have the loop, switchable More/Less, etc.