I use a rack for performances and recording; my twopedalboards are set up for when I can't have my main rig: rehearsals, jamming, and the occasional grab-n-go gig with a backline. For this post, though, the premise is that the pedalboard would be an all-purpose one, for gigging as well as recording and it'd have to suit several types of music.
Have heard good things about the DSM Simplifier; it simulates tube power-stage breakup as well as preamp tone, and its cab sim offers variable mic positioning and provides stereo XLR outs for a PA or console. Also has an FX loop of course. Importantly, it's all analog and is said to feel very much like an amp. So, the DSM would serve as direct box and give clean-to-grit base tone in one of its three flavors, rolling back for cleans they way I do now using an amp.
Couple of quality flavored drives in front of it for core tones with personality. Presently I run one Marshall flavor, one Fender flavor, and one higher gain type on each of my boards, to approximate favorite drive tones from the Triaxis in my rack. I do occasionally long for a Vox tone on tap too.
One "hot-button" distortion in front of the character drives, to serve as a cranked lead/feedback channel. (If I were putting together a serious all-purpose board I might use the TWE-1 or Hi Volt for this. Right now they're serving as my higher gain foundation drives on the two man boards.)
A handful of effects first, before the main drives: fuzz, (maybe wah), vibe, compressor, and a smooth/liquid OD (or more likely a dual OD). Tuner of course, and likely a tilt/boost for switching between vintage output guitars and beefier ones.
Perhaps a pre-chorus too. There's chorus downstream of course, via the mod/delay section in the loop. But a chorus before your drives gives a raw organic whorl that I often prefer to the studio-clinical crystalline swirl. I have pre-gain chorus available in my rack rig too; that sound takes me back to when I ran just a couple of pedals in front of a big cranked amp. Both my pedalboards have the chorus before the lead-&-feed drive but after fuzz and one or two ODs. So I mostly get the wild whorl but still can go 80s style if I want.
Delay/reverb and any other digital FX in the Simplifier's loop, of course, returning in stereo. If MIDI were in the picture I could see running two H9s. (I like my H9 a lot, but without program change capability I probably wouldn't put it on a pedalboard.) A MIDI controlled switcher could handle the whole pedal dance via program changes. But a regular non-MIDI switcher would suffice.
Power amp, compact ClassD stereo. Really the only choice for small & lightweight. It'd be nice to have tone controls in case I ever need to use different speakers than my own, or for those occasinal problematic soundspaces. The Powerstage series likely has something to fit the bill.
