One thing I've found tough to get a grip on with the Axe is stacking drive pedals. It can certainly work, and I've made some cool fuzz tones with dual drive blocks, however, I also find things don't always behave in the expected way. Something like a mild OD, TS9 style pedal etc, after a fuzz pedal usually tames a bit of the fizziness and/or excessive wooly low-end with hardware pedals, but I haven't really be able to figure out how to stack pedals with regular results in the Axe, always feels a bit more trial and error. I see some guys mention using 0 drive so I'll be curious to try that. I'm used to a lot of pedals passing no sound with the drive down, so I might be having more drive/gain than I need with stacked pedals.
I will mention one hardware pedal that I often have out, at least when I'm at home, is my EQD Speaker Cranker. Its kind of a light OD/boost, with a single knob. Adds a bit of gain, maybe a little grit as you turn it up, and a touch of volume. When trying different amp models or presets, sometimes my guitar will sound really quiet with a given setting, especially with a low output guitar, and instead of going into the menu and editing the input, drive etc, I'll often just turn up the knob on the Speaker Cranker pedal a bit, making the guitar a bit louder and fuller sounding. Knob is big enough I can adjust it with my foot enough
Gotten similar tones with the Mid-boost drive model with lower drive settings, though I'm sure FET boost etc would also sound similar. I've though about routing the drive and/or output parameter of that to an external control knob to get the same effect, but then I'd have to go through all my presets and add the block and settings, which is kind of a pain, but then again, if I did that, I could just set a knob for the input trim, and maybe use that to the same affect.
What is everyones "go to" option for getting a bit more output on quieter presets ? input trim, turn on a drive block, just raise the output level of the block ? Likely a ton of different ways to do it, but I'm sure they all have slightly different sounds, as I know doing things like lowering the input trim for a guitar with hotter pickups end up sounding different than dialing the input drive back