Lunastone use cascaded gain stages rather than clipping diodes to achieve their amp-like distortion. And Smooth Drive 1 claims to deliver vintage tones that are just on the edge of break-up, rather than full-on distortion.
Guitar pedals range from the very basic ‘turn a knob’ variety to those with deep MIDI implementations and layers of hidden parameters. Lunastone’s Three Stage Rocket [MIDI Version] overdrive aims to strike a balance between those extremes...
The design aim with the True Overdrive 1 was to emulate the way valve circuitry behaves, so that the sound cleans up very naturally as you back off the guitar volume control or play quieter.