To me the effects holy grail would be...

[simondo]

Small, robust, built in expression pedal. All the usual ins and outs. Battery operated.

But

Simple. I would like a good choice of usable pre-sets - right out of the box with others available to download.

Any suggestions?

[EdwardMarlowe]

I used to want All The Pedals. I've still got every pedal I ever bought - including a 1994 Sovtek-Electro Harmonix green Big Muff Pi, in the original wooden box, which I gather is now worth about ten times the £45 I paid as an undergraduate! Also have a DOD Phasor (vintage style, blue metal box), Boss BF3 Flanger, JD Crybaby, an of-brand OD pedal, a 90s eras Guyatone Tremolo...  I've recently collected a knock-off Klone in a mini-format, a mini-Spark, and a couple of others. I'd like a classic verb (though most of my amps to date have it, I'm looking to sell them all and buy a small tube amp Champalike), and something approximating a tape-echo. 

In recent yeas, I've rarely pulled the pedals out - I've not played for anyone other than the cat (an even harsher critic than me) in years, and my main amp for some time has been a Vox AD120VT with built in F/X. My approach to playnig has also shifted; I find I don't care for loads of bellsand whistles now - I'll keep all my pedals because I might one day (doubtful, I'll be 50 in 2024...) be worth recording as a player, and it would be nice to use the odd effect. Mostly, though, in terms of what I want to play now it's all old school rock and roll via psychobilly; if ever I had the time and thought I wouldn't shame myself, I'd love to have a fun, for-kicks gigging band that sounded like the Ramones if they'd formed in 1959 and been taken under the wing of Vince Taylor...  I've been sort of idly building up a new gorup of pedals with that in mind - the notion of having either a pedal (direct to pa) type preamp or a tube (or good sounding alternative) amp that gives me one, good sound (the reason I'm ultimately going to part with the Vox is I just don't use it's capacity; all I want is one, good clean  / edge of break-up tone in the amp), a trem pedal, reverb, echo and a couple of different dirt pedals (an overdrive and a boost). I might well pick up a fair few different od pedals, especially given how many fun, cheap pedals there now are on the market. 

With that backdrop.... My fantasy pedal 'board' would be as follows: 

One small, strip (approx 12") with seven buttons on it. There'd be an on/off mains switch, and a mute which connected to a tuner, inbuilt (dial and needle, not a digital tuner). Each  of the remaining five buttons would connect to a circuit inside which digitally reproduced a single effect. This could then be plugged into a laptop, on which I could use software to choose an effect to assign to each button, and then tweak the parameters to give me what I want (e.g. to get a decent slapback echo sound,  or a useable overdrive, without having to buy a delay pedal where I'm paying for a whole capacity I'll never use). The sounds I'd want would be: 

1] Clean boost

2] Classic od / crunch

3] slapback echo

4] Tremolo

5] Reverb

There should also be a line out (with built in preamp) that cam go direct to the PA. No pots or settings on the box itself, just on/offs, though perhaps there could be an advanced version which allowed these sounds to be tweaked live on the fly by the sound man.

That would be my holy grail unit. That and a good lead to plug between it and the guitar; if I ever played live I'd need nothing else.  

[LionAquaLooper]

On 22/01/2021 at 14:14, simondo said:

Small, robust, built in expression pedal. All the usual ins and outs. Battery operated.

But

Simple. I would like a good choice of usable pre-sets - right out of the box with others available to download.

Any suggestions?

Zoom G3X.