I have seen it come and go and come and go again
I remember in the 70s all wanting a fuzz face, octava and a wah, had to have those, then more stuff came along and we got to pick and chose. as things went along we found out the limits of all those pedals, one was noise, and then blamo it was time for the Hair metal days and the multirack mount days. That was nice, we all had 2 Marshall 50 watt rack mounts with a processor for each, played stereo into 2 4x12s and had 2 more fake cabinets with fake heads on top for show. our rack systems were behind those but they had huge drawbacks and the biggest was noise. Grunge hit and we all went back to simple rigs till pedals came around again. Now we have in the last 5 years seen more multi effects get popular again.
But the defining moment on all of it is noise.Without true bypass you end up with a uncontrollable gain level if using individual pedals, with a processor you end up with the effects of that processor not the ones you can get with individual pedals. So wanting a quite rig, and deciding to develop the "JIM" sound and not wanting to emulate every player out there I decided to get simple. I use stereo amp set up for natural chorus, Use tubes for distorion, if my amp can not give that I have a Tube Driver pedal with a real tube in it, that is hard to tune in to be transparent. I also use a Cry Baby Wha, Been using that brand since the 70s.
I have gotten very attached to that 2 pedal setup. Sure It has extreme limits, but that is ME, not me trying to sound like every guitarist out there. I think you have to take a pick, either go pedals and try to tame that, getting the benefit of being able to pick each sound you want. or go multi processor and deal with the tuning programing of that ( I notice thousands of settings advertised on some sites, easy right?) I can not chose for anyone else, just myself, I only wish I had the money back I have wasted chasing everyone else's sound for so many years.