Any love for Digitech ; Multi Effects, Rack units or pedal ?

[Diary Of An Axeman]

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Those units don't have the bells and whistles of today's AI, IR or Modelers, but I got these old multi effects floor units and Rack processors come across as good as any of the modern devices .
Any of you folks still use the older Boss, Vox, Digitech, Korg or Zoom effects devices ?

[aquataur]

Not quite contemporary, but the question is still open.

When starting off with a band, I did not have any effects. I bought an RP-500 floor multi-effects unit. I quickly dropped it, because it quite obviously was put together and serviced quite sloppy by the company.

Hardware is top notch, the thing is built like a brick s**thouse, the effects per se are well done, but there are some imbalances that makes it cumbersome to use. Like the level of the wah simulation, it is way too high and was not adjustable. Several effects, although being well done per se, are too big or too small in volume. All effects appear in a fixed sequence, which was severely limiting. The tuner is crap. It has an overall insertion volume drop.

Digitech had half-heartedly released some bug fixes but clearly went for new horizons.
A pity, this could have been made a gem.

Modulation effects all refer to one footswitch, which makes it cumbersome if you were trying to use it akin to a physical series of modulation pedals, like a phaser or a flanger activated at will.
It does not have any MIDI implementation that could make up for this.

The volume pedal has a great feel and is very smooth in law. I still use the smaller version of it (the RP-255) for pedal steel, lap and console since it has all relevant effects on board (echo and reverb). The volume pedal has an adjustable heel-stop, exactly what pedal steel players like.

Although the FX implementations were generally very acceptable, the lack of direct and quick access to their parameters and the subsequent menu-diving did become a thing after a while. This will however be the case with all similar multi-effect units. Creating presets on a MIDI device has its advantages,direct access to a certain effect has advantages too. I guess I would go for an effect switcher that combines both worlds next time.