Here goes.

I don't really like pedal overdrive so I will probably be ridiculously harsh with this one. When I tried the Distortron at a big box guitar store I was stoked about it and bought it immediately. I particularly liked its uncompressed character at pretty high (for me) gain settings. I also loved the 'subs' control. I can guarantee you they change the size of the cap that sets input impedence. The smaller the Capacitor, the less bass. Great call. This allows you to 'tune' the low end countour to suit your amp and still set the tone control where you like it. I need that control when I play through my HC30 clone. I like the EF86 channel and I find that while it loves pedals its also really revealing as to the way they skew your guitar's frequency response,

Now here's what I don't like about this pedal. When I have full subs to kick out the thump thru the aforementioned EF86 preamp I lose all treble cut unless I start goosing the tone control up. As I goose up that tone control the top end loses sparkle and takes on a hard, transistory crunch that doesn't live up to the promise of a neutral tone setting in lower 'subs' settings. Close, but no cigar. This is not a bad pedal and it sounds great through a marshall or even a top boost channel so I keep it, but it lets me down in the application I bought it for, to add some marshalliness to a matchless EF86 channel that's set up at the verge of distortion. The distortron has the frequency bandwidth to please me, but loses its best qualities when you dicker with the voicing that way. Alas.

Large overdrive

I bought a second hand one for around 50$ (50€ more precisely) and never regreted it ! As i said, it's the largest overdrive i've ever heard : it can be used as a simple boost to a savage overdrive. Nevertheless, it's NOT a true distortion as its name may suggest. It's a powerful overdrive with a very useful bass selector depending of the kind of guitar you play, and two gain stages (hi and lo). A very very very versatile pedal working well through modulations like EHX Small Clone or a sweet AC's tremolo. The only reproach i could do is its too "transparent" character ... if you like your base sound, it will be perfect, but it won't really improve your sound. Actually it's more a question of personal choice than product's quality. To conclude i'd say you would always find something to do with it !

It's a bit more opinionated than I'm looking for, but a good overdrive/distortion pedal for the price.

I prefer my Fulltone GT500 but this is pretty fun, too. The bass boost buttons are kind of fiddly and I've not seen a lot of value from them.

Difficult but Worth it.

Zachary Vex says it's the best distortion pedal of all time. I'm not sure about that. What I am sure of is that even though it's a difficult pedal to set up, once you understand how the controls work, the subtlety of its sound, you won't want to turn it off. On the internet, I found a mod, instead of a switch they put two, the second one to switch to high gain. I imagine that Z.vex wanted to formally distance the son from the father. But, that's where I'm going with my Distortron.

Versatile!

very good if you want versatility, it can function either as a distortion or an overdrive. all the way from a nice crunchy sound to heavy rock. not so sure about metal though.