Getting rid of the board

[HazBeen]

I have gone through similar thoughts on effects and pro and con discussions, fact of the matter is that if you lengthen the cable and have a lot of pedals signal will degrade to a point. To an extent there is a trade off you have to make.

Good quality cables (Evidence Audio SIS for instance), high quality pedals (with good connectors), parallel loop pedals (to cut our cable not in use) and high quality buffers (either stand alone or built in) limit this greatly. I have some but not much difference direct vs via my board and my setup consists of 12 pedals.

Now if effects are right for you, that is another discussion. I could not do without in any scenario I can picture, others do not need any or just 1 or 2.

[No lust in Jazz]

I've ditched the amp head and run a couple of pedals into a powered cab for monitoring sending the DI of one to FOH.

[The Badderer]

before ditching it if you have the option I'd wait to play a gig in the way you now are thinking of going and seeing what the sound man says. Does running through the amp give you want you need in a live setting with a full band or is that where having options comes back in to play. There's a big difference between the rehearsal room and live. Maybe running into an amp clean for more of your sounds is the way to go, but just go in one direction without seeing if you can get what you need live first.

[pbasspecial]

Maybe you could run your fx post preamp via the send/return before it goes through the power amp. That way you get the best of both worlds.