Having trouble balancing the volume for clean and overdrive/distortion sounds

[jazzyvee]

i've started gigging on guitar again and having to relearn all my good habits from when it was  my first instrument.
In the past when I was gigging on guitar I only used overdrive/distortion for a few solos so i set the volume from my pedal so that it was loud enough to match the music when kicked in. At the time I was using only a Pro-Co Rat distortion pedal.

So, here is what I'm trying to do now.
I have a couple of gigs coming up covering tracks by The Wailers where there is a lot of bluesy type guitar fills going on in and around the vocals, some with a wah pedal too and others with a creamy overdrive sound but still behind the vocals in volume and not like solo volume.

I am using a Radial Tonebone Trimode pedal which actually sounds better than the Rat with an active guitar. It has a great sound and allows me two channels of overdrive so one can be for lead and the other for lines when not soloing.

However when I set the individual balance between channels 1 and 2 and the clean sound they only seem to stay that way for the current volume of my guitar.

If I increase the volume of the guitar, then when I kick in either channel of the pedal, the volume is too loud relative to the clean sound and if I reduce the volume of my guitar then they are too low when kicked in. (sort of seems to be exponential)

I do have an MXR compressor at the end of my board and was  hoping that would help but at the moment i'm finding it hard to get that set right too without things sounding squashed or having little effect.

My Q-tron mini is another one that misbehaves with volume changes, but i kind of understand that because it works on the attack of the input and behaves more aggressively  with an active guitar than a passive one which is why i bought the compressor in the first place.
For reference i'm planning to use my Strat Ultra and USA Strat with alembic pickups and active electronics, oh and the both behave differently to the above scenarios.

Does anyone have a rule of thumb i can refer to for setting these things up so that the relative loudness stays consistent with guitar volume?

Thanks