This is a debate I am utterly unqualified to engage in, but hell, it's the internet, so here's a bit of anecdotal blather:
I have owned exactly four outboard effects in my thirty-five year guitar-playing history: A Korg chorus pedal, a Yamaha flanger, a DOD "American Metal" distortion pedal, and a Roland rackmount delay from circa the mid-1980's. The only one I miss is the DOD pedal, which I used as a clean boost by dialing the gain way down and turning up the level. It was a fun way to goose my preamp.
Today I have a Fender Mustang III, which is a fun and versatile "toy" amp, with a variety of built-in effects, none of which is amazing but all of which suffice for my knob-twiddling impulses. Despite its capacity to make all manner of weird and sometimes beautiful noises, it doesn't sound like what I want to sound like when I play. My tastes have really gotten quite distant from my fantasies involving playing solos with a big, wet, chorusy-delayed before arena crowds. I use the Vox-emulator, and the various cleanish Fender classic emulations, but rarely much more than a little reverb or amp tremolo for effects.
I also had a Cyber-Twin for about five minutes, but it was a very noisy specimen and I kicked it to the curb. It, too, was fun, but not really my bag.
Anyway - mostly I play a tube-driven combo because it works for me. I don't gig, I don't travel, and I play acoustic about two-thirds of the time, so I don't have to change tubes all the time. The sounds I get are the sounds I like. 'Nuff said.
To sum up: I have nothing good or bad to say about effects pedals per se. I just know that they don't currently figure in my concept of what I want to sound like.
As for pickups: Well, I've played weak pickups, medium output pickups, and super-strength pickups, and my preference generally is for something weaker to medium-output - although not as weak as the sorry-ass pickups that used to be in my Peavey strat clone. Unlike the issue of higher frequencies in your signal, where more is better because you can always attenuate it via carefully chosen capacitor, I am not a fan of pure loudness from my pickups. I feel like you can (almost) always add more by boosting the signal, but taking away is hard. Things tend to get sludgy with really hot pickups even at lower gain, and I really like being able to hear all the notes in the chords most of the time. The exception is that some higher-output single coils (Duncan Quarter Pound, or P90's) really float my boat, but as I suggest above, higher output humbuckers almost always overdo it.
MY opinion, and worth every penny you paid for it.
