I primarily play metal and rarely clean, I run my delay and chorus in the amp's effects loop using a Zoom G2.1. Will my tone improve much switching to analog pedals, or will the analog distortion in my pre-amp not make much of a difference in the quality of the delay pedal?

Well, your Zoom effects box costs about as much as your Asian made Jackson... even if you had higher end gear, I still might not have suggested you to bother. The Zoom processor you have is decent, especially for your likely rather low end rig.

Well, your Zoom effects box costs about as much as your Asian made Jackson... even if you had higher end gear, I still might not have suggested you to bother. The Zoom processor you have is decent, especially for your likely rather low end rig.

I've upgraded to a Dean vmnt.

Not that it looks to be too big of an upgrade, you still should be pretty fine to go with that box. ;)

Not that it looks to be too big of an upgrade, you still should be pretty fine to go with that box. ;)

I'm not talking about the cheap bolt-on vmnt that is Dean's version of the js32t, I'm talking the one with the ebony fretboard and Seymour Duncan livewire pups.

Ok then, look, does the rest of your setup live up to it? If it doesn't, then don't bother. If you do have a nice tube amp (which I doubted given that guitar you had before your current) and a nice cab etc.. then analog pedals might make more of a difference.

Point is, you won't notice the difference too much inside the crap tones of a crappy setup.