They say history repeats itself, and I guess as I get older I'm starting to see the truth in that. I remember in the late 70's and into the 80's how effect pedals were all the rage. Then along came rack units. Every guitar mag that did a spotlight on a player always had a little blurb at the end about "what is in his rack". If you were a pro, you had a rack unit with your name or band's name stenciled on the side and in interviews would say things like "I really love Bradshaw's switching system, its very clean, very functional..." On Ebay, if you could find a bunch of Boss pedals that came in the optional case that held 5 pedals at a time.. wow, like, SCORE!

Well, now pedals are back, and have been for a while. Most of the stuff I remember from way back when has been re-issued, and there are plenty of YouTube demos showing guys with MONSTER pedal boards (3 separate delay pedals, really??) and it seems that pedal fever is back again. Though also rack units seem to be starting to make an ever so slight come back.

So I'm curious, and would love to get everyone's opinions, from you new guys who are just getting into effects to dinosaurs like me who have gone through both the pedal and rack phases. Which do you prefer and why? It seems to me that some pedals have amazing sounds not found in rack systems, like the Blue Sky Reverb "shimmer", but maybe I just don't know which rack systems support that kind of effect. It seems like pedals are the way everyone is going now, and I wonder why when you'd think rack systems would be able to dial up virtually any sound you want.