Stomp Box vs Digital Multieffects Pedal

There's always a battle between individual stomp box guitar effects or the multi effects processor in terms of sound quality, price, durability, etc.  When I started playing in a band, I use to borrow effects because first of all I can't afford one and second it's very rare in my province (Capiz) in the Philippines to buy guitar gear or accessories such as stomp boxes.  I was using a Boss Distortion during those years and just that one single pedal until my good mate Louie asked his parents to buy him an electric guitar with effects pedal and that's where I came across the Boss Super Overdrive and Ibanez Flanger.  I love these two pedals in terms of their sound quality as well as durability coz until now they are all right apart from the Ibanez Flanger which my Mate said he couldn't find it so may be the lucky borrower who didn't return it became the new owner now.  Also I have tried a couple more stomp boxes like the DOD Metal Maniac which is a good supplementary effects to any distortion pedal to give more sustain, gain and crunch.  For me the two Boss best and versatile pedal are the Hypermetal and Metal Zone.  If you want a clean lead, with nice sustain, you'll go for these two pedals.  Either of the two will give you the versatility you need albeit rock, funk, jazz, almost anything meaning if you are in a show band most probably you will be needing either of these pedals.

So much for the stomp boxes coz there are a lot of them like the famous Tube Screamer, Stereo Chorus, Auto Wah, Compressor, Phaser, etc. etc. then there came the multi effects pedal.  After collecting all these stomp boxes, you'll be surprised they put it in just one digitally assembled gadget.  So the first difference among the two would be Analog versus Digital.  A lot would say analog is the best.  I won't argue, yes analogue is the best because it all started with analogue anyways, however, there are now alot of very good digital effects pedals in the market.  It was just that when it started, the transition from analogue to digital wasn't that great yet.  Like for example, I kind of use my mate Ritchie Hoo's Zoom 1010 before and I kind of like the sound of it during solitary practise with mini amp or earphones coz it was so versatile and everything's in there already from reverb, modulation to dist/drive to noise gate, compression and delay.  Some of the presets are very good as well and you can customize it to your liking.  Also Korg's Toneworks is such an amazing effects pedal far more better than ZOOM.  Have tried AX1500 and it's really awesome much better than the newer AX3000.

Right now I own a Digitech RP55, and as they say this is a small pedal with such a great punch.  I bought this from Amazon.co.uk coz I needed an effects pedal badly because I joined a band here in England and I need to buy my own gear.  So, after buying my very first owned electric guitar coz again I use to borrow back home and have not owned a single electric guitar before, I needed to pair this with an effects pedal.  The dilemma of either buying a single pedal or the multi effects having in mind cost and quality.  If I were to buy single stomp boxes then I should collect minimum of three to create the sound I like, which is a bit of a bluesy, rocky and jazzy sound, I need to have overdrive, flanger, reverb/delay.  But if I were to buy a multi effects, then almost all of the effects I needed should be there.  Then having to consider cost, it is more expensive to buy stomp boxes and collect all three rather than buy a cheap multieffects, which I got right now the Digitech RP55.  Indeed, I am very satisfied with what I got at the moment, this Digitech RP55 the sound is just brilliant from metal to reggae to clean sounds to funky and jazz.