Imo Timmy was never meant to be a standalone dirt pedal, but it (or not) indeed spawned a whole trend/following of users that demanded "transparent" drive pedals to their high headroom clean sound. It all became weird really. Because even most of the pedal makers themselves never really thought transparent drives was meant for clean amps... but hey... people want it, give it to them.
I to was caught up in that mindset for a long time. In the end i came to the conlusion that having a layer of pedal breakup/dirt that is "transparent"/no character and sometimes purely lifeless didnt appeal that much compared to just letting the amp model do its own thing (breakup), and then.... going back to old proved and tested method, pushing an amp over. The overdrive pedal then adds its flavour.
So if its a TS, PT, klon, BB or whatever.... whatever fits the amp and guitar really.
The recent Lightspeed trend is also interesting as its praised for sounding "just like my amp but more". Its a fools game i think, because its simply just not true. It may sound very good, as good as a low gain transparent pedal can sound. But its still a layer of pedal gain on top whatever.
Each to their own i guess. But i prefer gain pedal that has their own strong personality these days. If i turn on a pedal, i want it to sound like i turn on a pedal, its supposed change the sound to something else, for me.
