Footswich vs overdrive

What makes you want an O.D pedal? If you love the sound of the overdrive you get from your amp, you might not necessarily need one. I wouldn't say either has its disadvantages that I can really think of. I guess the overdrive would need a power source from either a 9v battery or a psu where as the footswitch is powered by the amp

you have a frontman solid state? get an amp-in-a-box overdrive, not a tubescreamer and leave it on all the time with the gain set really low to 'tube up' your sound.... then put a more traditional distortion like a Rat out front of it for when you need heavy duty crunch.... don't bother getting a footswitch for the onboard distortion on your frontman, its basically just an MXR distortion+ that clips your signal with diodes to ground downstream of the tone controls on your amp

go to a store and try out the following ODs with a frontman:

ZVex distortron

EHX OD glove

Pigtronix Fat Drive

Catalinbread's DLS, WIIO, CB30, Galileo, RAH, SFT, Formula #5 and Formaula 5F6

Man, if you've got a frontman, the best thing to do is burn it, frankly.

What are you using your OD to play anyway?

You're 17 and you don't have a part time job? I grew up fairly poor. If i wanted something that cost more than 100 bucks as a teenager i had to raise the money myself. I didn't even have any videogames until i got a summer job in jr high! I started building my gear collection this way before I was old enough to drive.