My Digitech unit does such a bang up job with its pedal sims. They’re so good you cannot tell the difference to their analog counterparts A/B’d and the proprietary Digitech stuff is so good. I love the 16 voice Multichorus in stereo. Just a hint of that adds lush hugeness to everything. The Whammy is absolutely spot on, superior to every other modeler’s attempt at it (because it’s their product) so I don’t need a standalone.
As far as standalone goes, I have my custom made Cornhole overdrive tailor made for my exact sounds for either pushing amps with a clean boost or adding extra saturation and sustain. It also has an LPB-1 boost in series. I have both a triangle big muff for smoother fuzz sounds and a companion fuzz for insane, nasty serrated sounds out of this dimension.
I have the Dime wah. The amount of adjustment it has means I can dial the heel, toe and bandwidth to exactly where I want it (my toe down is darker than Dime has his and a touch back from that is an excellent place to park it for leads.) I still have the original Zakk Wylde ZW-44 overdrive, the circuit for which I based the cornhole off though not many of the internals are the same. It’s a little less transparent than the CH but does have its place as it does a hell of a modern metal, clanky grind if I want that sound.
I have a Bitcrusher I run before the amp which is indispensable for my band’s signature industrial sound which adds distinctly a digital “squelch” to certain palm muted sections (No Pulse, River of Fear) a Polyphonic Octave generator for huge single note lead lines with an octave above and below.
I have a Blackstar HT-Blackfire that is a brilliant, real tube hi-gain preamp for instant, tight modern metal sounds. The MXR 10 band is invaluable to shape the final guitar sound in the room in the studio, pull or boost certain frequencies before the amp like a custom boost and to run between my live fly-rig and power amp to perfectly adjust for the venue. For bass I modified my ODB-3 so the distortion is much warmer and less fizzy. Last but not least is a modded Boss NS-2 (more transparent, no noticeable tone suck) to keep it all under control.
For my live fly-rig, assuming I need to travel as light as possible, the very least I will take is the RP-1000, the bitcrusher and POG in the stomp loop, the 10 band and my Crate Powerblock to amplify it. If I can afford more real-estate on the board, I line-mix the HT-Blackfire and companion fuzz with a pedal to mix the fuzz in and out but the Mark IV model in the RP1000 is so good, it does the job live perfectly and the built in Redline overdrive means more space and less cables.
The most gear I ever used was cleverly routing the RP1000 with the HT-Blackfire in the amp loop sent to an ADA mictrotube 200 and one half of my 4x12 for the core tone and cleverly splitting include the dual rectifier in tandem with it out the other side of the cabinet for my rhythm sound. I spent enough time with the sound engineer to mic both sides and have them in phase. It was equal parts excessive and glorious and came in handy as another band had their head blow and I was able to lend them my Dual Rec. I couldn’t have done so with my overly specialised “core tone” rig.
