well, I am currently in the studio every few weeks, and playing regular live shows with (shameless self promotion ahead) my band Tv IV Dogs... www.myspace.com/tvivdogs or www.tvivdogs.com( although we have nothing there cos myspace is so much better for now...more interactice).

Anyway I've never had any problems with feedback and rubbish rubbish on stage, I'm not sure if thats because I have really nice pickups in all my guitars, because we have a great sound engineer or because we dont often play with much distortion (well, obviously thats a big reason).

Anyway, I know very well to keep my money firmly in my pockets until I know what I want.
I am an effects gearhead and have been through many many stomp boxes and muti-effects, but have never really used, or (in my opinion) needed to use Compression...even on my old Pod XT I never used compression...

My quiery was more to assess whether I should have been using compression all this time or not.

I know I need a reverb pedal at some stage, but even on my previous tube amps with footswitchable reverb, I seldom used it...so maybe not just yet. I want to get something I'll use alot. I use alot of delay and modulator effects, which is why I have myself a very very nice delay pedal...

anyway, I'll look around...pretty keen on the Zvex Tremolo probe. I have a wah probe and couldn't be happier with it.