How many patches do you all use?

I’m in the same boat with iaresee & Unix, but I have a ton of patches all of which are based around the same structure; mostly the same drive levels from scene to scene and same effects that I like, and I’ll just pick which amp suits my mood at the time. Lately it’s been the Fractal Wrecker, but I use all the Bludo’s, Dumble, Two-Rock, Komet, Dirty Shirley, Suhr, Carol Ann, Trainwreck, Fuchs, Swart.. Lol.,
Hey, why not!? Especially now that the Firmware isn’t being updated every other week, it’s really given me a chance to go back thru and seriously put on a fine tune on patches I had worked on throughout all the updates and then forgot about. I’ve even managed to really start to organize the finalized “keepers” that hold up to the “next day, fresh ears” test. I have about 20 of them right now, I’m just waiting on another pair of studio monitors so I can A/B/C them so I can get the best idea of how they should translate to the most variety of FRFR’s and I’ll probably zip em up & upload them for those that are interested.
 
I recently switched from AX8 to XL+ so I'm still deciding on how I'll set things up, but right now I think I have 4...clean, crunch, "loose" high gain and "tight/brutal" high gain. I'm pretty sure I could get all of it into one patch, or at most 2, but so far I feel like its easier to just keep them separate, especially if down the road I actually bother setting up the FX blocks. I also have to keep in consideration that I use the 2nd cab block to record my other guitarist's tube amp (slave out from Mesa MkIV into a cab block = win) so that chews up some of my processor and limits what else I can do.

Keeping in mind...my setup is for writing/jamming. I don't have any live performances to speak of, so I'm not sure what I would do differently in that situation. If the band were to make heavy use of effects and things, and if those effects were different for each song, I could see having one preset per song but the only difference being the effect parameters. We mostly just do one or two different high-gain tones, no effects except maybe some small verb/delay over a lead or something. If we were take this current project live, it would be the sort of thing where you would expect to see a couple 5150's on stage and maybe a drive pedal out front. FWIW.

In response to above: I've seen Igor play live a bunch...if that setup works for the repertoire they kick out night after night, there must be something to it. Always went off without a hitch.
 
I have about 300 preset named “the greatest preset”
I seem to save to a new slot every time I change something then end up flicking through the list confused about what the he’ll I was thinking at the time.
Lmao! I too struggled with something like this, I don’t believe I have a single factory patch left that I haven’t overwritten with my own patch & that was after I used up all the user slots! But I always named them with the amp and the firmware number at the end of them so at least I knew that much.
 
Wow....so literally I'm the only asshole that uses that many patches(70). LOL!

Probably just a lot more tired than we are :p

Lately just P&W. I have 5 main presets but most always use just one. I have a clean amp on x (Princeton reverb) and a beyond breakup amp on y (hook 3b?) which I mostly use and roll the guitar volume back to control from almost clean to slightly crunchy rhythm to smooth leads. I have four scene switches and 5 more switches for effects plus tap/tune. I have two expression pedals, one to control volume to my personal monitor and one for wah.

I have at least a couple hundred (or more) presets I've downloaded over the years and some I've made myself that I like to occasionally go back to for inspiration or to see how a certain effect was made :)
 
Classic rock - 80s - 90s - funk band. I use about 16 presets (2 AX8 banks). 3 or 4 are multipurpose and cover about 2/3 of the songs, the others are song-specific or close.
 
Original band with a lot Dylan, Dead, Marley and the like thrown in.

2 main patches - Bandmaster for clean, Soldano for dirty
acoustic sim
violin
 
120 presets with no more than 5 scenes + 3 EV2's to do whatever else I need. Two cover bands now and another tribute band I need to program 46 more songs for by July 27th. Mostly newer heavy stuff but a hand full of classics in the chick singer band. So yeah I'm in a world of hurt. Now add in and Axe FX III to try and get going for this stuff. Figure I might be able to use that come September. FML For what its worth the AFX II XL+ still kicks a$$.
 
Patch per song, with scenes. Which makes the AXE FX III somewhat difficult to use without a dedicated FC. That's a LOT of MIDI programming.
 
I play in a cover band that does mainly 70's and 80's songs so for this I have 3 main patches ranging from smooth bluesy, to hard rock, to high gain metal. Each of these patches has 5 scenes all laid out in the same way:

1 - Basic Rhythm
2 - Rhythm but a pitch detune block
3 - Clean with hint of chorus
4 - Same as scene 1 but boosted 2db
5 - Same as scene 1 but boosted 5db and filter block to shave a bit of the low and high end

I also have 5 IA switches set for Chorus, Phaser, Delay2, Filter, and a Wildcard. Beyond that my 2nd expression pedal is set to adjust the level of Delay1 (tempo based) and reverb.

I also have a couple of other patches for specific songs using synth blocks or other effects but the 3 main patches cover around 90% of what we do.
 
I have about 300 preset named “the greatest preset”
I seem to save to a new slot every time I change something then end up flicking through the list confused about what the he’ll I was thinking at the time.

This! I periodically make a preset that I am confident will be my standard sound...then junk it and make another one!
 
I use one kitchen sink preset, and copy it and edit if I have a song that needs something different. When I used the fx8 I tried the preset per song strategy and it is nice to have the perfect effects for each song but it is just too much work to program, and even worse getting to the right patch between songs adds some stress while playing. For me I've found simpler is better.
 
80s and 90s rock mostly. I’ve never gotten into scenes. Using AX8
Patch 1; cleanish Vox
Patch 2; Plexi
Patch 3: Recto Red.

Then a couple of separate patches for particular songs i.e. songs that need formant, whammy pedal, other pitch effects.
 
For my live i used Max 3 patches whit 3/ 5 scenes...is good for check and level the volume on stage...sound good no problems....
 
3 general-purpose patches:
  • Carol-Ann Tucana 3 (plexi and modern Marshall tones)
  • Fender Twin (clean, blues, rock)
  • Fender 5e3 Tweed Deluxe (vintage tones)
No scenes but most footswitches are assigned (Amp X/Y, Amp Boost, effects, etc) so you get a lot of mileage out of each preset. Sometimes I stay on a single preset for a whole night.

It's difficult to use more than 3 general-purpose patches live because they all have a unique set of effects. My memory just isn't good enough to remember how 4+ general-purpose patches work and how each effect block was set. I've tried adding a Morgan AC20 Deluxe and a Diezel VH4 but always forget how to use rarely used presets, so now I stick to just 3.
 
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