I'm confused regarding the concept of "gain" of 2 stage pedals
Suppose we have clean stages, and first stage has gain of 10 and second stage has gain of 20, it's clear to see that total gain is 200
But suppose we have 2 stages which include clipping (at different pointsof signal due to different signal levels and different diodes), does it convey all information if we calculate the gain of each stage and multiply them ?
Thought experiment
Suppose we have first stage of gain 100 and LED in feedback loop
We follow that with a second stage with gain 2
For second stage, we first try no diodes, then LED, then Si, then Ge diodes in the loop.
In all cases, total gain would be 200.
But all sounds would be different.
What did we really convey by multiplying gain of each stage and stating the result ?
Is there a better way to more exactly state what is going on ?