You made a good choice with the DRRI. To me, it's the best-of-all-possible-worlds amp with a great combination of clean tones, volume, weight, and affinity for pedals. My only problem with it was that the tremolo channel was way, way too bright for my taste and I didn't feel comfortable poking around in the electronics to clip the bright thingamawhatsit. I also wasn't crazy about the reverb, which I realize is blasphemy, so I always just go through the Normal channel and use ambient reverb models on my Verbzilla. (Spring reverb just doesn't float my boat, I guess.)
I've done a few mods over the years, including replacing that stock speaker with a really sweet Weber Vintage Ceramic. I liked the original Jensen well enough at first, but the Weber is on a different level completely.
The pedal issue is why I originally looked at the DRRI. At the time, I realized that I was gravitating towards pedals to shape my sound and figured the Fender clean would be a good foundation. I use a Barber Direct Drive for dirty tones, and the mix with the Fender's sound is a nice change from a tube-screamer type of overdrive I started with.