Preset Housekeeping

Jemwiz00

Jemwiz00

Member
I am finally getting around to organizing my collection of presets. I currently have a couple sets of “commercial” presets, some of my own, and some factory presets. I am aware of how how to backup and how to move the presets to new slots. What I am curious about is finding out what some of your workflows would be to best organize your presets. Do you organize them by genre, amp type or by song? Do you ever periodically do a house cleaning and purge some of your less utilized presets? I figured now was as good a time as ever (after flashing the new Q10 Firmware) to dig in and get seriously organized. Thank you all in advance for any suggestions you may have...
 
I make one preset per song. And then I have a lot of presets for fun. That amounts to a lot of presets.

I keep all my performance presets close to each other. However, there are so many presets and revisions of presets at this point that I will need to reorganize soon. Unfortunately, that will also require me to update all iPad midi presets. It's doable but really boring.
 
I used to have one preset per song, but with fw10, without lag, I'm going back to the old times, when I had the Digitech rp1000: 6 universal presets (1 acoustic, 1 clean, 2 crunch, 2 lead) and some preset for specific songs. Working with one preset per song gave me a lot of problems in volume leveling between presets.
 
Smittefar said:
The volume leveling requires some really strong strategies to work smoothly. I think, I will finally be able to do a video on, how I approach this this week.
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I'm trying with midi "vol+/vol-", it allows you to modify the scene volume "on the fly", but it's a hard work
 
I go with one preset per song, but the presets are usually the same just repeated, I use between 5-6 presets, just rename them to the song. I use the AustinBuddy amps mostly so the levels are consistent, I just add effects and such.
 
Sergio C. said:
I'm trying with midi "vol+/vol-", it allows you to modify the scene volume "on the fly", but it's a hard work
Click to expand...

I do the same for fine adjustments, but what do you do, when you have 40+ presets, and there is a firmware update. A firmware update is almost certain to change your levels a bit, so there is a need to redo the leveling after an update. Also, the midi vol+/vol- affects a volume control at the end of the chain (in the output block), so if you have very big differences from scene to scene, it might cause some weird level jumps in delay and reverb trails.
 
Yeah I seriously need to do some organizing. I did some last week, but then I got bored and kind of left it half way. I need to leave some space between different types of presets, because now they're all cramped up and I don't have any space near the high gain presets for new ones.
 
My presets are a mess right now. I end up making multiple copies of a preset , when adjusting , then I bounce back and forth to compare changes , sometimes making 4-5 copies.
Different amp and cab changes really mess with the "mix" out front , so I personally stick with only a couple of presets for live work
 
Each of my songs has its own preset, and I have lots of others for exploring amps and effects, and for inspiration. And yes my banks have become cluttered and in need of organizing, and some purging. For that matter, so does my house.
 
One preset per song but based on a few ‘pedalboard’ presets with effects and scenes setting for the songs.

Bank 1-6 for the gig setlist.
Banks 16-up with songs in alphabetical order which I copy to banks 1-6 for each gig.
Banks 60-64 for the ‘pedalboard’ presets that songs are based on.
I save common effects blocks and reuse these in ‘pedalboard’ presets like amp cab chorus drive reverb delay etc.

Then I have a spreadsheet with block, pedalboard and song inventories.

It’s work:mad:
 
I categorize presets according to whether they're used with a guitar amp, direct to FOH, in an effects loop or stereo. I use a 2 or 3-letter prefix; BP, 65, AMP, DIR, etc... and group them together in sections from the second page on in Axe Manage Presets. I reserve the first page for set lists, current song presets and base presets for the amps that have been dialed in. I name those something like Matchless X/Y, Swart X/Y, Tucana X/Y etc.... Banks 1 and 2 on the first page are reserved for setlists only. If I'm not sure whether I can run stereo or not for a gig, I'll have a mono list in bank 1 and a stereo list in bank 2.

I've found being consistent using the same identifiers in the name helps make organizing presets and locating what's needed easy to find. I like to keep an empty bank or two between the preset types on each page so there's room to add presets to the category without having to reorganize the whole thing.
 
After much experimenting, I've settled in to a system of presets in pairs. Each pair is a "guitar rig". The first preset is clean channel and the scenes are whatever fx I want on my clean sounds (which can include OD). Then when I press the #1 button, it takes me to the second preset which is a driven amp (or simulating switching from clean to dirt channel on an amp). The beauty is, the 2 channels don't need to be from the same amp. Then scenes on the second preset for fx that I want. It is set so when I hit the #1 button, it takes me back to the clean preset. Scene 4 on both clean and drive presets is always a lead boost with eq and delay.

So now I have many pairs of presets with different amps for clean and dirty (sort of like an endless number of dream rigs :) ). The key is, for any particular song in the setlist, I never have to leave the pair I'm on. Simple switching and basically 16 sounds from which to choose.
 
I like the concept , but couldnt you do this with X/Y amps in same preset? How is it set for button #1 to go to a particular preset and back?

Thanks
 
stratavarious said:
I like the concept , but couldnt you do this with X/Y amps in same preset? How is it set for button #1 to go to a particular preset and back?

Thanks
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I could do x/y but then it would be just one preset so it would only be 8 scenes. With pairs, I get 16 scenes. Also, in some cases I do use x/y within a preset but not necessarily for clean/dirty. In ax8 edit, go to the footswtich tab, then right click on # 1, select preset, then select the preset number within that bank you want it to change to. The paired presets have to be in the same bank of 8.
 
Sonofiam said:
I categorize presets according to whether they're used with a guitar amp, direct to FOH, in an effects loop or stereo. I use a 2 or 3-letter prefix; BP, 65, AMP, DIR, etc... and group them together in sections from the second page on in Axe Manage Presets.
Click to expand...

This I haven’t considered doing and I like the concept. I initially started adding an effects loop at the end of the chain before the cab in all my own presets (but find that I like the reverb and delay in parallel) so then switched to making presets without a cab block when I go into a “real” amp. It became hard to find which I preset was which due to then similar names I gave them. I really like the idea of letter prefixes. Thanks for all the suggestions!
 
Actually now that I think of it, some functionality for better categorizing would be amazing. Does the Axe Fx III have any improvements in that regard? Like the option of FOLDERS.
 
I don't think so.
Smittefar said:
The volume leveling requires some really strong strategies to work smoothly. I think, I will finally be able to do a video on, how I approach this this week.
Click to expand...
I should be able to post a thread (including video) on this tonight. Hopefully, some will find it useful.

Edit: I feel asleep while putting the kids to bed. I took the hint and went to bed rather than finish the video.
 
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I don't use a lot of presets, in fact I can, (and often do), use just one preset which is now based on the Friedman 2018 model and uses 5 scenes. This is now more workable since we stopped doing covers and went over to writing our own material, so there's no need to try and emulate sounds off records.

Anyway I use two banks for my band presets. The two banks contain (almost) identical presets. The presets in the first bank are set up so Out 1 goes to the desk and Out 2 goes to an FRFR powered speaker (CLR). The second bank has the same presets but this time Out 2 taps off before the cab block so I can use a power amp and guitar speaker for trouser flapping purposes.

The rest of the presets are all over the place and really need tidying up, but I somehow never get round to it.
 
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