When I was into huge racks, and trying shit just because I could, I had an two 1128s (pre/post) in my rack.
Anymore I prefer to get my core tone from guitar/amp/cab. If I need to get there with outboard gear I'd rather tweak all the things you listed to not tweak, lol.
This was one of my first and most important discoveries when I started playing. My first real amp was a Peavey Bandit, and I used this thing in the loop. Ghetto but effective.