Lately I’ve been playing those big graphite picks Jerry used to use.
I never cared for them much, but turns out to be a good choice with a light string and a Fender amp.

My go-to normally are the Green Premium Celluloid Fender Heavy’s; the other colors don’t sound as good. Trust me.

Also use the big clear triangle V-pick. Those sound closer to bare fingers for the way I play, and I kinda dig that. .

finally, there’s lots of bare thumbs and fingers in there, very, very, little nail.

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I don’t use overdrive, never liked them.
If you hear something sounding like overdrive, it’s either amp or germanium fuzz.

There are a few misc devices I use that have output gain, and those will boost the input to the amp a little or a lot, but it’s not the primary focus.
I have an old Mu-Tron III, and those always have gain adjustment on, but it’s as likely I’ll use the gain to turn it down as up.
Best bet is germanium fuzz or some kind of op-amp boost like the Mu-Tron.

The problem for me with the OD routine is they all seem terribly bandwidth limited, unresponsive to picking dynamics, and unresponsive to volume control manipulation.
They obviously work a charm for millions of players at every level, I just don’t like ’em.

I don’t really have an immediate budget recommendation for you.
The stuff I use, it’s just the stuff I had that I learned to use over the years.
Same Vox fuzz since the early 80’s, which really doesn’t sound like OD in most applications, but I use it with big string and weak pickup and it’s just right.
The Trombetta is the only “new’ pedal I use consistently and I had Paul set it up as a deliberately low-gain germanium pedal.

I’ll try to scare something up for you tho. .
Send your contact info to “contact” here with a note about fuzz/OD and as soon as I find something cool we’ll let you know.

ok! hopefully soon. .