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From Hermida Audio:

I recall a few years ago receiving a call from Elliot Easton (The Cars). He wanted me to develop a pedal that would allow him to use clean amplifiers on the road and still be able to get his overdriven/distorted sound. I asked him extensively about the type of guitars, pickups and pedals he was using at the time and the type of amplifiers he was trying to emulate. We came to the conclusion that a multiple gain stage pedal was needed to get the levels of distortion he was looking for.

Before the conversation with Elliot I had experimented with overdrive/distortion dual gain stage pedals for some time. There are many ways to design multiple stages (these days the use of JFET or Mosfet transistors at each stage is a common approach). In terms of configuration, one of the simplest ways is to follow the approach taken by tube amps. In a tube amp each amplification stage has its own voicing and gain characteristics and are connected in series. Since the gain on each stage is fixed, some of the stages will have a level control to adjust the amount of signal to be sent to the next stage. This allows the amp to be used to amplify, overdrive or distort the guitar sound.

Before the conversation with Elliot I had experimented with overdrive/distortion dual gain stage pedals for some time. There are many ways to design multiple stages (these days the use of JFET or Mosfet transistors at each stage is a common approach). In terms of configuration, one of the simplest ways is to follow the approach taken by tube amps. In a tube amp each amplification stage has its own voicing and gain characteristics and are connected in series. Since the gain on each stage is fixed, some of the stages will have a level control to adjust the amount of signal to be sent to the next stage. This allows the amp to be used to amplify, overdrive or distort the guitar sound.