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Doom forum bros. I want a distortion pedal for my Ampeg setup. I thought I would be satisfied with dirty amp/fuzzy amp, but that shit gets old sometimes, so now I really really want to try some distortion pedals in my setup. Obviously The Elements is a top contender, but I require more options to make my choice a complicated one.

this choice, it's not complicated. the elements. it's really the only contender.

other notable runners up: old school rat, hm2 or the hm2 clone that nick is making. the eqd talons looks cool, but my friend tried one out recently and said that though it sounded really good, it was just a hair light on the gain for his doom band. might still be cool if you're running in conjunction with a fuzzy amp. or maybe you use less gain than he does.

I love my HBE Big D, it has it's drawbacks but once you learn to use it it's great.
I set mine on hard clipping with the gain completely down and the tone completely up (out of the circuit) and usually use the first or the fourth clipping diode mode on the switch.
So far I haven't heard a more powerful, dynamic or brutal distortion yet (I didn't try The Elements though), it might however be too 'loose' for what you want to do, I don't know.
Oh, by the way, what amp do you play, what type of sounds are you particularly after and are you using downtuned guitars?

RAT!

RAT or a DOD Death Metal. DOD Death Metal if you want to be sloppy and have a ton of feedback (I love it), RAT if you want to pulverize

DOD Death and Grunge or American Metal, Arion Tal Mast, Boss HM2, DS-1...

The VFE Alpha Dog is a sick tweakable RAT clone that my bud has been running in his bass setup for a good while now. I was getting some wicked velcro fuzz sounds by manipulating the filter control. It felt strangely transparent on milder settings too. Weird.

They're not really distortions, but I've always been really impressed with the Toneczar Vault and the Iron Ether Oxide. It's a shame Toneczar stuff is so hard to get a hold of, I'd really like on in my rig. D:

The FUCK OD has come out on top of every distortion pedal I've played BUT I haven't played the Elements.

For cheap, the Barber Dirty Bomb is most excellent. But the Elements is my recommendation. The Fuck OD has my attention and I hope to land the Circuits to Cure Cancer Fuck OD on ebay

Elements for the most balanced distortion, HM2 if u want that grindy boss distortion tone.

The HM2 is always a good choice

Harmonic Percolator.

Here's another vote for the elements, but not because of it's kickass distortion.
Right off the bat I ran the elements as dirty as I could to see what it could do. My collection has grown and been tweaked since then and now I use it as a boost/eq with the blend at about 1/3 of the way. the versatility makes it a great place to start. You can cop a ton of tones with it from crunch to fuzz.
I'm fortunate in that my current setup lets me kinda specialize what pedals do what without having a ton of them. its def a key part of my tone though. Elements>Pharaoh>oath is kinda my favorite thing now, I do have a control box that allows me to control each pedals volume though so ymmv.

That said I'm hoping to get some time with Nicks tourbox. Some rad looking shit in there.

So basically The Elements is a requirement. This is not bad news.

I've recently been intrigued with RATs as well - I love tones I heard recorded with Rats, but always seem to hate the tones on demos when I'm on youtube.

I totally forgot about the Fuck. Those are all sorts of awesome. Can it get kinda tight and chuggy, or does it get more fuzzy as the gain goes up? And should I be looking at an OG Fuck or the Mini???

And as for my rig and the toanz I like.

Dirty amp is a Blackstar HT5 boosted with a Barber Silver LTD or Mastortion running into a 2x12 with 75w Celestions. I feel like this is really tight, aggressive dirt. I like this, and want something that would compliment it whether that means a pedal that is very tight and aggressive as well, or something with a bit more low mids and a slightly looser feel I'm not sure...

Clean/pedal amp is an Ampeg GVT 15 running into a 2x12 with some v30 clones.

Tones I really dig: The Sword, HoF (Death is this Communion), Mastodon, ASG, KWC, Jerry Cantrell, etc etc. Basically the heavies that are tight enough to palm mute the shit out of everything.