The signal flow of the OT is explained in Merlins’ guide. The reason why things work like they do is that the amp page settings take hold before going into the FX:
MACHINE == AMP PAGE == FX 1 == FX 2 == TRACK LEVEL == (MASTER)
Therefore, any gainstage set by the amp page will occur before hitting the fx slots.
It is indeed not ideal that the lofi does not have output trim, but it is what it is…
A nice way round this is to sample L clean R distorted, then set the track to be essentially mono using mid-side on the spatializer settings page. Then you can put pan on the scenes and go from dry to wet distortion using the crossfader. the rest of your tracks can still be stereo if you wish.
A solid tip there sir! I’m a big proponent of M/S yet it did not occur to me it could be used for monoizing as well… Great stuff
I was referring to that trick above. 
Rebumping an old thread.
Here’s how I do it. (For drum machine destruction)
Add a compressor after lo-fi:(
ATK =0
REL =0
Threshold = 0)
Adjust RAT until volumes are similar.
With a DIST value of 90 a RAT of 15 seems to do the work.
Probably would kill a cleaner signal, but by this stage the dynamics are f****d