All my pedals (Rangemaster, Ge FF, Si FF and TS808) sound horrible through my tube amp when it's at tv levels.  People always say to get overdrive from a non-MV amp to add a pedal.  They all sound very thin and fake - I like the sound of my SS amp's drive channel.  In fact, the drive channel on it sounds great with the pedals.  

Is this normal for all of these pedals to sound pretty bad at low volumes?  I expected the FF's to, but not the Tubescreamer.

Would a Tone Bender be a waste of time already having 2 FF and a Treble Booster?

Any recommendations?  Or would an attenuator be up my alley?

Thanks

I'll bite.

At bedroom levels, SS is the way to go IMNSHO. My solid state amps sound very good at whisper quiet family room levels, and marvelous at the practice studio with an electronic drum kit.

And like a mosquito at a gig with a live drummer.

That's when I bust out the Marsnall(top part of the h broke off) & the 412.

That's my experience.

Regards

RDV

P.S. Run the treble booster into one of the FFs & you've more or less got a T.B.

I feel that a bifg part of your problem might be psychoacoustic.  That is, in the way you are hearing the sound.  Many hi-fi units have a bass and treble "boost" switch for listening at low sound levels.  That's because the ear is more sensitive to midrange frequencies at low sound levels.  The contour or DBFX or other control simply adjusts for the way that ears hear.  Usually they give a boost of about 5 to 10 dB in the bass and 2 to 5 dB in the treble range.  You would probably find a big improvement in your sound if you crank up the bass and semi-crank the treble.

I've seen several reports of double-blind tests that show that very few (if any) people can tell the difference between SS and tube amps run at levels below the clipping threshold (once clipping, it is VERY obvious which amp is which).

the speaker and amp loading can be a big part of a big tube amp sound or little tube amp sound.
  In my exp which includes trying countless tube amps and such is that they all have a sweet spot volume wise...some wider than others.
  One way is to have a smaller tube output section and speaker ..
  You can get the loading with smaller stuff exactly [~almost...lol] like a big amp [theoretically mathmatically and Ppl say so].
  Anyway to make a long story short you could try a CMOS type deal which think kind of emulates the sound of heavily loaded tubes, little tube amps get used and can be ;abused' to get great tones, many SS amps  do pretty well at low volume affairs

I think Brett's onto something here.  

I'll point out that not only do ears work differently at different volumes, so do speakers.  Years ago I had one of the early Peavey Classics, and the speakers had this Jeckll/Hyde thing where they sounded one way at basement band-practice volumes and entirely different at gigs.  Typically, in an effort not to blow up so easily, many instrument speakers are rather stiff, such that low output levels are insufficient to move the speaker into its linear range.  If it sounds thin, it's because the speaker can only produce bottom if it's "wide awake".

My guess is that the tone shaping on a lot of pedals is based on how it sounds plugged into an amp that is cranked well above "TV levels" (although I have this aunt whose hearing has declined in recent years and her TV competes favourably with my amp!).

One way to address your needs is to build in a stage or two of semiparametric EQ.  RG Keen has a nice article on designing simple frequency-tunable cut-boost circuits that can be easily nested in a distortion unit just ahead of the output volume control.  These can help to compensate for what your ears don't hear and what your speakers don't deliver at college dorm levels.  My hunch is that the popularity of a lot of commercial distortion pedals that include separate treble and bass controls stems primarily from their ability to produce tones that *feel* bigger despite low volumes.  Anything that lets mom and dad watch TV in peace and quiet while junior wails away in his bedroom is fine with me.

i noticed on my last little amplifier that i had which was tube, too. that i had to turn up the vol just enough to feed the outptu tubes  otherwise ti sounded as if the preamp was pushing the speakers with no power tube.

granted it was a low wattage amp anyway but it still had to kick up the tubes.  anyway i added a small light bulb back there to catch up some of the extra volume and it still let the tubes work but it didint' make them work too hard, and i still had a great bedroom tone.  personally if you are playing at bedroom level, i would just build something like th firefly.  once i starved the power section too i found that i got a great bedroom shred while the rest of the house slept

As an addendum to the comments above by brett/mark...
there is another issue with low-levels and psychoacoustics..  playing.

I read an article a while back discussing why direct recording devices (pod, etc) tend to not get as good recordings as a cranked amp - and much of the reason wasn't the actual tones, but the lack of feedback that the player got from a cranked amp..   the tended not to 'dig in' as much - and didn't play quite as hard.   There always seemed to be less 'energy' in the performance when recording direct with headphones on as opposed to just crankin' it up and letting it rip.

I have to say - those comments have held true for me.. I usually throw down scratch tracks direct - then real tracks get recorded with my Rivera cabinet (either Rivera head or Bassman) and those tracks always sound better and come off as a better performance (well, at least with more 'energy'.. can't claim that they're all that GOOD)
"-)

Hello Craig--
    All the previous posts touched on good stuff.  Maybe something like the Hot Si or The Rocket would get you closer to the amount of gain that's missing.   The 3-tranny or 4-tranny circuits are always good for more fuzz through a clean amp.
Brian.