Back in the 70's, we (guitarists and keyboardists) all had tape echoes - Echoplexes and Roland Space Echoes. While the effects were cool, they were considered miserable machines - noisy and often unreliable. You always had to have spare tapes on hand and it seemed like they'd screw up at the most inopportune times.
It was maybe 1980 (?) when I was the coolest keyboard player on the block when our manager got me one of these:
...a big ol' Eventide Digital Delay. Mono, as I recall, with no presets. But it was DIGITAL - which was oh so cool, with its pristine clarity, reliability, lack of noise, and best of all.... no frickin' tapes.
I must've cost $2,000, for all I know.
Everyone had to have 'em. Within a few years, the market was flooded with single rack space DDLs.
The tape echo units were thrown into the trash with glee.