PROGRESS UPDATE:
So, after all the excellent comments and advice I have settled on this setup.
View attachment 110671
It is actually pretty basic but consolidates three primary AX8 pre-sets into one. Here's what it's doing for me:
1. This is my ALL IN PRESET - general purpose, covers all types of music. If I had to live here, I could do a whole gig with great results.
2. S1 -S5 are now single stomp switches - no holds etc. - I can stomp on one and know without thinking where I'm going.
3. It uses 2 amp blocks and a single cab block - Idea is that usually I only need clean, "an appropriate gain patch" and Solo on any given song.
4. I'm still playing with the amp switching/un-muting options to see if I can get gaps down between commonly used scenes etc. but it's not something that is bad, so I won't lose sleep about it. Mostly - I keep the clean amp the same for S2-S5 then use mute/unmute amp block and a channel switch on the CAB block.
5. The BOOST CS1 adds the amp boost and any other option that I feel is needed (e.g. unmute a delay bock, Vol block engage for boost) for that scene. This works really well and doesn't require any amp block changes so is really smooth.
6. I took the advice around 'redundant buttons' and now don't have a dedicates one for pre-sets and scenes. I can access that with the Master layout function.
7. This then allows me to have a dedicated button for Chorus and Drive - two of the one's used most on the AX8.
8. Finally, I added a Pitch 1 as the Chorus hold option and Drive 2 as the Drive 1 hold option. This gives me access to other flavours if needed.
9. The DLY/CS2 option basically gives me a Delay option (usually the Aurora) and other CS2 controlled options.
10. Pre-set is currently running at 80.5% and so far doesn't have any 'overload' issues. I definitely don't want dropouts so i may look to optimise that a little further.
Summary
I still have a number of song specific patches, but this overall seems to be working so far and sounds great.
I did have one unexpected issue where the screens would go blank meaning, I couldn't select anything - Mid song this is a showstopper.
I discovered this was to do with switching layouts and to solve this, I had to go through each pre-set and ensure I didn't have any LAYOUT LINKS turned on especially for per pre-set overrides. Once I'd done that, everything seems to be working consistently.
I'm going to be using this live for the first time in a couple of weeks so I will report back on how that went and hopefully bring this journey saga to an end.
Again, thanks for all contributions and suggestions - everything has helped get to a solution that works for me.
Andy.