I agree that I use almost none of the presets, in my daily use. But - let's take an opposite approach. What if the AFX had been dropped on your door, or you reveiwed it in a store setting, let's say, and there were NO presets on it; it was a blank slate, and you had to start from scratch figuring out how to program this complicated piece of gear, with no previous experience. I suspect most, if not all, of us, would have walked away from it after about 10-minutes of frustration, fiddling and tweaking. We would have believed it to be WAY too much trouble.
Now, fast forward, and we have the AFX with some basic presets on it. Hey, now we have a starting point. We have a reference to see how things linked; to see the possibilites of using different rows of chains, and interlinking them by interrupting them somewhere, and inserting a wet signal into a dry signal path midstream. Hmmmm - maybe we would have never thought of that, but after seeing a few basic patches, we might start exploring how that would work out. Maybe some of the basic patches have a bit of LFO tripping modulation at various frequencies that are beyond the "typical" players experience....hmmm, never thought of that one, either. Oh, wow, and here's one with an echo decay tripping another echo into a backward loop - never had two echo pedals that would link each other like that, so I never thought of that, either.... Oh, and check this out, I can use a user-designed IR cab....who would-a thunk!?!?!?!
All this is hypothetical summarizing, but it points out that there are ideas that may have come from the basic presets. There are selling points that undoubtedly came from some of the presets. There are inspirations that derived from some of the presets. No, I don't use many of the presets. I suspect that as time passes, and more of the players use the AFX, and it is more of a household word, that there will be a development of the preset banks that will be more usable to many different styles of players; for now, in my opinion, Cliff and Co. are on the right track to demonstrate some of the expanse of capabilities that are in the box, to plant a few seeds to germinate. If Frank Zappa picked up the box, and it was full of Keith Urban presets, he would have moved along; same thing for same thing for David Gilmour if it was full of Robert Johnson presets. But with a wide variety of "almost there" patchches, it at least spar your creative juices. Hey, and let's face it: the presets will be fine for many of the users, right out of the box. Some folks don't need that challenge to ad to thier list of frustrations. Some folks will take it like it is and go with it, and that's just fine.
Look at how often foks have been reminded to RTFM.... that should demonstrate how many don't and wouldn't have, discovered things if not led to the well, with a few patches. Humans are different, and some need it one way, and some need it others. Frankly, if I had recieved the AFX new with only amp patches that were tweaked, I would have been disappointed; now, the amp settings are one of my main tweak points.
