How many use only presets, or do you roll your own?

manatarms

manatarms

Member
Just a question out of curiosity. I see a lot of people asking for presets and of course there are tons of people who sell them, and I was wondering how many of you use only presets or do you build your own.

I've been using digital devices since the late 80s and so I've used some pretty awful interfaces (Digitech TSR-24s, I'm talking to you!) to build my own presets. Things have come a LONG way since then. I pretty much create my own presets for myself. Every preset I've ever downloaded or tried just doesn't do it for me and I think it's because they are built for someone else's guitars and output devices. Pretty much the only thing I use any presents for is to see how certain effects are setup, but then I build my own to sound the way I want and then apply the effects settings that I saw in a preset. I think it's probably because I know what I like and so I just start building and tweaking until I get what I like. I will say, it really helps you understand your equipment. I'm brand new to owning any Fractal gear, but I've found the FM9 to be super easy to build my own presets with scenes and custom controllers, etc.
 
IMO presets are great to demo what something is capable of, but not really practical for real use - not for me anyway. When I scroll through factory presets, I find everything is kinda over-the-top and stupidly saturated and has all the bells and whistles hooked up, and 99% of the time I don't need any of that junk. Fractal stuff is fantastic as a means to have a lot of tools available, but that doesn't mean you need to use all those tools at once.

To me, a good guitar sound is usually pretty simple -> you need an amp (or sim), a cab (or sim), maybe a verb or delay, and everything else is gravy or contextual. If I didn't want to spend the time making those sound the way I want, I'd just go the easy route and get a plain ol' tube amp.

With bass I go a little farther, a light compressor up front, and a hi-pass at the end to clean up the mud, get some headroom back, and prevent abusing my speakers.
 
I’ve always made my own. If I hear something interesting I’ll download a patch to look at certain settings but most downloaded presets just don’t translate well to my ears. Plus I enjoy the process of creating my own stuff w fractal gear.
 
TedEH said:
IMO presets are great to demo what something is capable of, but not really practical for real use - not for me anyway. When I scroll through factory presets, I find everything is kinda over-the-top and stupidly saturated and has all the bells and whistles hooked up, and 99% of the time I don't need any of that junk. Fractal stuff is fantastic as a means to have a lot of tools available, but that doesn't mean you need to use all those tools at once.

To me, a good guitar sound is usually pretty simple -> you need an amp (or sim), a cab (or sim), maybe a verb or delay, and everything else is gravy or contextual. If I didn't want to spend the time making those sound the way I want, I'd just go the easy route and get a plain ol' tube amp.

With bass I go a little farther, a light compressor up front, and a hi-pass at the end to clean up the mud, get some headroom back, and prevent abusing my speakers.
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I am right in line with this. I always create my own. I actually learn more by trying the different types of delays and other effects and twisting the knobs to see what they do than I do listening to presets. Very rarely will I find something in a preset that I feel the need to copy. My signal chains are typically pretty simple like listed above. I never feel the need to turn it all on at once. That never translates well live.
 
I always build my own, using a common format and common settings. Of course I look at other people’s presets to see what I can learn, but then I incorporate anything useful. Leon Todd’s videos are a useful source of ideas.
 
TedEH said:
I find everything is kinda over-the-top and stupidly saturated and has all the bells and whistles hooked up
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I don't find this to be the case with ANY Fractal products, except in the case of the "special effects" kind of presets, which are intentionally "special".

Most of the factory presets I find to be very much not over the top as with many other vendors.
 
JasonE said:
I am right in line with this. I always create my own. I actually learn more by trying the different types of delays and other effects and twisting the knobs to see what they do than I do listening to presets. Very rarely will I find something in a preset that I feel the need to copy. My signal chains are typically pretty simple like listed above. I never feel the need to turn it all on at once. That never translates well live.
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I agree. That's what I do to, and also coming from someone who plays live, it has to translate well to that.
 
Roll my own. I make my own presets, too. :cool:

That said, I got Live Gold because I haven’t played through more than half the amps in these things and I have no clue how they should sound. It’s nice to go through them and get a good idea of what each amp can do and the way AB laid them out, I can modify them to do what I need them to do, basically keeping just the amp/cab (or no cab, in the case of my FM9) and the layout.

After Cygnus it’s just a matter of minutes between opening a blank preset and having something up and ready to go within minutes. I LOVE tweaking stuff, dialing presets in is fun for me, especially when I’m going for a specific sound in my head that I can’t get. Makes it all the more rewarding when ya finally nail it.
 
unix-guy said:
I don't find this to be the case with ANY Fractal products, except in the case of the "special effects" kind of presets, which are intentionally "special".

Most of the factory presets I find to be very much not over the top as with many other vendors.
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This shows how different we can be as players. I find almost all of the factory presets in my FM9 to be over the top with effects and gain. I also find the amp models to have much more gain than the actual amps I own of those models. Thankfully it can all be dialed back.
 
I usually create my own, but sometimes use preset blocks as library channel templates.
 
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I've only had mine for about a week (soon to be former AX8 user), but I've been pouring through the presets. Mostly to dissect and find really cool sounding blocks. I'm gradually building a decent sized library of cherry picked blocks. All varieties. From there I dial things in to taste. My 1st preset is still a work in progress, but I could gig with what's there right now. I'm still wrapping my mind around how many more things can be controlled and stored in scenes compared to the AX8. The FM9 is quite a beast in all the best ways.

I think the presets (and their blocks in many cases) are fairly instructive in terms of getting ideas on settings, as well as routing and signal flow. I think there may be more utility in sharing blocks than whole presets for most of us. I agree there are so many variables in terms of sharing presets that there will inevitably be some that aren't one's cup of tea. Mining presets for tasty blocks can make every preset something worth checking out though. Highly recommended.
 
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manatarms said:
Just a question out of curiosity. I see a lot of people asking for presets and of course there are tons of people who sell them, and I was wondering how many of you use only presets or do you build your own.

I've been using digital devices since the late 80s and so I've used some pretty awful interfaces (Digitech TSR-24s, I'm talking to you!) to build my own presets. Things have come a LONG way since then. I pretty much create my own presets for myself. Every preset I've ever downloaded or tried just doesn't do it for me and I think it's because they are built for someone else's guitars and output devices. Pretty much the only thing I use any presents for is to see how certain effects are setup, but then I build my own to sound the way I want and then apply the effects settings that I saw in a preset. I think it's probably because I know what I like and so I just start building and tweaking until I get what I like. I will say, it really helps you understand your equipment. I'm brand new to owning any Fractal gear, but I've found the FM9 to be super easy to build my own presets with scenes and custom controllers, etc.
Click to expand...
You told it as it is for many I think, or at least for me. The only "commercial" preset I use on a regular bases is a Marco Fanton Toto preset, that I adapted with some minor tweaks for my use as I prefer the old commercial version better than the free version he did with the latest FW. MF's (free on G66) presets and Burgs free presets are almost the only ones that I can download close to "roadready" for me. If not anything I download will generally not be good from the start and I fatigue quite fast trying to tweak them to my taste.
 
I learned to play guitar by learning from what others did, chasing the tones and techniques I liked, asking questions, and injecting my personality and discoveries along the way to make it fit or become what I heard in my head. I’d say that I pretty much make presets the same way. Funny how that works.
 
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