Oh I just noticed in your signature, you have the exact same Orange cab that I'm getting :) How do you find it?
It took a good while to break in, and during that period it sometimes sounded really shrill in the mids, but now it is good. It didn't really break in while I was playing with my post-gain on 1 (which is loud for home use with any of the big 120W Peaveys) but then I started playing it on 2 when no-one was around during the day and that broke it in a lot quicker.
A friend of mine has an Orange amp, I think it is a Rockerverb or Thunderverb, and he really doesn't like it. He says that the bottom end is too 'soft' and that he needs something crunchier. Which is interesting given that he plays in a sludgy, doomy kind of band. He thought it would work but now he is looking at getting a Peavey or a Mesa.
I don't really need pedals for gain on my 6534+ - it has tons of gain on the lead channel. What I use them for is to make the gain more controllable to to tighten up the bottom end a bit (Peaveys are notoriously bassy, although the 6534+ is less so than the others). I run an MXR Custom Badass Modified O.D. with level on max and drive on zero, with an MXR/CAE Boost
before it so that I can push the signal into that OD pedal when I want more gain for something like a noisy metal type guitar solo. With this kind of setup I can actually run less gain on the preamp, which makes the amp less buzzy. What I am doing is boosting the signal into V1 (overdriving the input tube) rather than having the boost occur in the amp so much. It seems to work for this family of amps. You just need to work out what works for your amp and do that. My Classic 30 doesn't make anywhere near the amount of gain so if I need to use it at practices I use that Mooer distortion pedal, which I hate. Distortion pedals in general I have found to be garbage. I prefer the tubes to do the work of creating that sound if possible.
I use quite a lot of distortion though as I go for a real '80s crust/grind type sound. In my current band we are going for a sound more like this (which works with the Nailbomb due to its abrasiveness, but very different from the kind of hardcore you play):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWboBDmvtlg
