RE: qualities of reverb/cool vitage delay units

["William Walker" <billwalker@baymoon.com>]

"are they still irreplaceable and worth
Getting"

The answer I believe is no. There are still some very good  delay and 
reverb
units available from TC, lexicon, Eventide and Roland. I have a very
inexpensive TC G-Sharp that does great sounding delays and reverbs, and has
lots of knobs for tweaking as well as storage for presets. The new TC Nova
delay and reverb, are outstanding floor pedals that have studio quality
sounds and really cool interfaces. The Eventide Timefactor is one of the
greatest delays I've ever tried. I think I actually drooled on one at the
NAMM show. I've owned several delays on that list including the Korg SDD,
The roland SDE 100 and 3000 units, and MXR delay,  a delta lab effectron,
and an Ibanez DM1000 and I must say my cheap TC G sharp blows them all away
in sound quality and flexibility, hell, my Keeley modded Line 6 DL-4 sounds
better and has a wider range of cool delays than many of those old 
machines.
As for the shimmer effect,  you can get that out of one of the new Digitech
expression factory pedal, as well as whammy effects, without the noise that
earlier whammy pedals exhibit. Also check out the new Roland space echo
pedal, which does great simulations of old Roland tape echo units. There 
are
just a lot of cool delays available now days though the trend has been away
from rack mounts and on to the floor. Unless you feel sentimental about
vintage gear, I just don't see the need to search for the older rack gear.
Even the vaunted TC 2290 can be sonically replicated, the new nova delay
sounds that good. 
Bill