Basically, yes. I have 2 sets of presets, or at the very least, my 'live sounds' and the rest are my studio tones. I've found almost nothing I do in my studio translates live. For one, my studio monitors aren't what I play thru live so there's a huge gap there. Also, playing in a controlled setting at home has very little to do with playing with a bass player and drummer at stage volume. FX mix has to be totally different for live use if you want things to cut thru the mix. For instance, my delay setting at home is much more subtle, live I need a lot more otherwise it just gets buried by the other guys. YMMV.
The fly in the ointment for me is every firmware update lately usually makes me almost have to start over, which I hate. And is generally why I don't update my firmware. Maybe 2x a year. it takes me a month of gigs to get back to where my levels are what they need to be. I mix with my feet. Every tone and every subsequent effect is dialled in for every situation I may need. The latest update completely changed my cleans in regards to everything else. So for the last 2 weekends I've gone from being very happy with how the update sounds sonically, to a minute later wanting to throw my rack into the ocean because so many of my levels aren't balanced anymore. I am not someone who 'sets everything at x.xx' level. That doesn't work. Clean needs to be dynamic and loud, heavy needs to be louder, solo needs to be loudest. Drive blocks need to break up cleans, but not send them over the edge so that the patch is too loud. It's been a nightmare, and means I've been spending a lot of time with my back to the audience between songs trying to go back to patch X and edit it in the 10 second break I have every 4 songs. It sucks ass. It'll prob take me another month of gigs before everything is back to where it needs to be. At which point they'll be another update that changes things dramatically. I really, really wish the updates didn't do this. The sonic benefits for me rarely outweigh the headaches of level changes, clipping etc.
It's almost like if every time there was a Pro Tools update, your previous mixes all were thrown in the trash and clipping and needed to be re mixed. To me, I don't care what improvements were made, but it trashes the months of patches I've built up, who cares. Just my take.
So in conclusion - 2 sets of patches, live and studio. And choose your updates wisely. I choose to update when I had some low pressure gigs where I could basically 'take the night off' and keep my back to the audience half the night. The band hates me for it, but I have no choice. But this is also why this will be my last update for prob the next 6 months. The stress of getting up there and having shit all messed up is not fun.
I just got back from my first rehearsal using the axe at serious volumes, and it didn't go as well as I hoped.
I have spent the last 2 years learning and loving the Axe in my home studio where it never left my desk rack, so all my patches were designed for recording straight into my DAW, and they sound amazing at low monitoring levels. Having said that, I cranked it up tonight to compete with a live drummer at gig volumes. Holy crap - uncontrollable feedback and the fx were insanely overwhelming. I basically had to go through every patch and cut the mix/level in half for each fx block (even more for comp block) in order to get that home studio sound while playing live.
So what does everyone else do? Do you simply have two copies of each preset, one for recording and one for live? Kinda scratching my head right now trying to figure out the best way to approach this.