by compact pedals, i'm guessing you mean stompboxes.... individual effect pedals for each effects.
in reality there is no flat out "better". it really depends on you and your needs....
i used to have like 10+ pedals in a pedalboard that i thought was the shit.... whammy, wah,chorus, flanger, delay,footswitch,ect.... i had a world of gizmos at my feet and i loved it.
that was my pedalboard+head+cab days..... i sold off and or traded in pretty much all of them now. it's not because they werent good, they were great, but then i discovered the world of midi.... the ability to control multiple units with one controller, black magic to me.... instead of a head i now have a rack, which gives the same function as a head with the preamp and poweramp... but then i also have other things like a sonic maximizer,graphic eq, compressor,noise gate,notch filter, power condishoner, and a multi fx unit......
making my rig fine tuned,less noisey, and extremely versitile.
with multi fx units.... there are good and bad.... cheap shit like digitech rp's and zoom 606's,ect..... thats a no no.... nicer stuff, like say a boss gt6, thats more like it.
but most higher end rack effect units like some t.c. electronics and lexicon shit is the A+ stuff....
i used to have a tc electronics g-major... it was sweet! tons of usuable effects, nothing more.... it was an effects unit, no cheesy distortion modeling or anything... just high quality effects.
my financial situation forced me to sell it
. so now i'm using my old digitech valve fx rack.... it's great, but not quite as good as the g-major. i eventually plan on buying another g major or if i have the money... the G FORCE which is like the end all be all of multi fx(for $1,500 though, it better be)...
instead of " here comes the chorus" *switch to rythem distortion, turn on flanger, switch off delay,and switch off wah*with all the tap dancing.... fuck that, with my midi rig..."here comes chorus"*preset #2 on midibuddy* and it changes everything all at once...
amazing.
but if all you need is a simple delay effect, or a phaser for a cool solo.... $500 on a g major might be a little overkill.
also, if you head isnt midi controlable... then it will take away from the ease of use.......
