How many presets do you use?

These days: just one. Pretty much camp on my Trey A patch all night. I use others at home, but live I like the familiar layout and I love the sound and for the kind of music I'm playing these days it gets me there and back again with a big grin on my face the whole way.
 
I use pretty much 12 presets, I play mostly covers with a bit of session studio stuff, but having come from a Mesa Mark IV and being familiar with the mark stuff, I set up my first bank of 5 presets 1. MIV clean 2.MIV Rhyth 3.MIVLead 4. MIIC+Lead 5.MIIC+Lead a little louder with OD engaged and longer reverb.

Bank 2 I have presets 1 and 2 as Rhythm and lead Triptik patches respectively, 3 is a U2 style delay patch, 4 Super reverb with Fuzzface setup and 5 a super clean Twin patch.

Bank 3 I have to my own ears, made two kinda 'perfect' sounding models. One is a mix of a Tucana and Brit Silver, and the Second is an EJ style Jumped Plexi patch.

On all patches I have Verb ON and switch Delay, Ch, FL, PH, Trem, Octave, Comp and a wah as I need them. I dabbled with scenes in the beginning but found it more hassle than it was worth in the end, seeing as I rarely use anything more than a delay or boost for solo's, this felt the most comfortable way to use it!
 
Five, plus a few specials. The five are clean, almost clean, crunch, overdrive, and acoustic simulation. The number tends to grow as I play with different amp models, and then I prune it back because I don't want to be adjusting lots of presets after a firmware update, or a when I find a better chorus or reverb setting.

I don't use scenes, but switch effects in and out using IAs. Solo settings and amp swaps within patch are also done with IAs.
 
All 384! :) Seriously I have all presets full. No factory presets. I keep all my presets that I have made and when I make new ones I have to delete some of the old ones. Don't use them all in the same amount but it's nice that you have a library to choose from when recording.
 
Interesting.

I'm in several cover bands, mostly blues-rock/pop styles. I use only 5 patches, each with a drive footswitch that either changes amps or turns on a drive block. So 10 core tones which gives me the variety I need with different pickup selections.

Each patch has the same group of common effects (wah, phase, trem, flange, chorus, rotary, delay & reverb) + a couple of special effects unique to each patch. Each patch also starts with 4 GEQ blocks - I use one a time (or none) with scenes for different guitars.
 
99% of the time, I only use my top 10 or 15 presets.

I do keep my fave's in the top 40 or so slots, for quick access.

I'm mostly set up in Scenes, with clean to OD to effects to solo, left to right, in all of my patches. I try, as much as possible, to use a standard preset layout for all my patches, so the tails carry on from patch to patch.
 
I've used my Ultra live for near a decade and my foundation is literally 1 clean and 1 lead preset. From there I have a chorus based preset, a trem based preset, a couple of specialty presets and variations of my basic presets at different volumes. These are fed into a Big Sky where I use about 5 basic presets so ultimately a lot of versatility without a lot of noodling. All MIDI controlled so I never touch anything but my guitar.
 
I use one preset per song but these are often identical presets. I name the presets after the songs so this is very convenient. Since I use a lot of different guitar (4 to 5 per gig) I need different amps and settings.
I have three different acoustic guitar presets (steel, nylon, baritone) and different presets for the electrics be it humbucker or single coils.

So all in all maybe 10 - 15 presets I always come back to plus I use scenes on some presets.
 
At one of the AxeFest gatherings, I asked this question to Tosin Abasi, who was demonstrating his axefx tones.
I'll paraphrase his reply.
" 1 or 2 presets". :)
He went on to explain that he felt he might be under utilizing the Axefx, but that he was able to get what he needed with the 1 or 2 presets.
that was an eye opener me.

My last gig, I used 4 different presets: two for acoustic guitar & two for electric guitar

I love my axefx!!
 
5 main presets, 2 specialty ones in another bank.

For balancing volumes, I use a dB meter to get them exactly the same at the cabinet, then adjust them to taste/sound from there. The meter gets you into the ballpark, but the perceived volumes can need tweaking. Setting them by perceived volume alone always results in huge volume swings on stage for me. So, for me it's meter then tweak. It has produced the most predictable results.
 
I go into every gig with 4 presets that are appropriate for the music and the guitar(s) that I'll play. I occasionally play in situations where I just use the Axe Fx with no pedal board. In those cases I just use one preset and manually turn on/off effects before the song starts.
 
I do lot's of different things depending on environment. What I do the most of one preset per song with 5 scenes (most songs don't need 5 and never had a song need more) All my presets are based on my one mega preset. So every song is the same preset but the scenes allow all the right stuff to get turned on and off as needed at once.

When sitting in with a band and not having a bunch of stuff to pre program I use my mega patch. It is also 5 scenes. Scene 1 is a Triptik modern with drives and fx programmed for it but all bypassed. Scene 2 is a Triptik Lead. Scene 3 is Triptik clean. Scene 4 is a Morgan Ac 20-dlx with drives programmed but everything is bypassed and Scene 5 is a Ac 20-dlx lead

I am currently on a mini coffee shop tour and tonight we have a list of 20 songs that we will do at random. What I have done is two presets (each with 5 scenes) one for the TripTik and one for the Ac 20-dlx. In both cases scene 5 is the lead. The other 4 scenes are all fx and drives bypassed. I have scene's revert off so my plan is to make temporary presets on the fly. When they call out a song I will quickly go through my scenes turning on and off what ever is needed.
 
For live playing I use one preset with different scenes. Basically I try for what I call my own sound that I have honed in on over the years. However for recording because I have a need for various type tones I will develop a new preset to match the song I am working on. The beauty of the Axe so much versatility what a great piece of equipment.
 
main 6 presets, normal stuff, clean crunch heavy solo etc. then for the aic tribute gig, there are 9 different ones, most use 3 scenes on each one, normal sound, effect, and solo. so totally about 20. most have outdated patches I've downloaded or old stock presets that are in dire need of updating :)
 
I use one main routing layout which has been adapted to a handful of presets. Usually I try to cover each of my bands with one preset where I can.

Scenes 1-5 are rhythm, dirty, clean, clean + fx, lead. I use scene controllers, drive blocks, and null filters to cover the range of gain that I need. Then I have Scene 8 assigned to an external switch that's used for a one-off type effect usually.

Main rock band = 1 preset
90's tribute band = mostly the same "rock" preset but some specialized effect settings that I need to match the original recordings
80's metal tribute band = "rock" preset but different amp/drive blocks
Southern rock/country band = same preset routing but with a different amp and more vintage-y sounding effects
Pink Floyd tribute = 1 preset for DSOTM, 1 preset for The Wall, 1 preset for Shine On (main differences are amps and very specific controller settings for different effects)

Each preset gets all the blocks saved as Global blocks (i.e., all the rock band are Global 1, 90's tribute Global 2, 80's tribute Global 3 and so on). That way I can branch off and pretty quickly create new presets for each band when I need a one-off effect or controller configuration.
 
Cover band here. Sixteen presets. One for the bridge pup and one for the neck pup. They each have eight scenes and cover various rhythms and leads. Nothing major effects wise. Those two cover 80% of the night. The rest are song specific.
 
Cover band, live I use around 15 presets mostly with 1 scene, few with 2 and only 2 or 3 presets with up to 4 scenes.
Used to have around 40 for a gig but it was way too much to handle in a show etc. so I shrieked it and it's ok for me like this.
 
BreadTooth said:
At one of the AxeFest gatherings, I asked this question to Tosin Abasi, who was demonstrating his axefx tones.
I'll paraphrase his reply.
" 1 or 2 presets". :)
He went on to explain that he felt he might be under utilizing the Axefx, but that he was able to get what he needed with the 1 or 2 presets.
that was an eye opener me.

My last gig, I used 4 different presets: two for acoustic guitar & two for electric guitar

I love my axefx!!
Click to expand...

Yeah, nice. I sometimes think "oh no, I'm under utilizing the Axe" (or any complicated piece of gear), then I realize I don't HAVE to make things complicated - in fact it often just distracts from playing. Scenes and global blocks have helped to keep things simpler, though I'm still doing the one-patch-per song route for the most part. They're all based on a copy of my "foundation" patch though, so consitency is maintained. As far as playing live I just don't find I want to complicate things by having all kidns of different amp models for each song. Too much fiddling!
 
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