A Few Words About Presets

There are two types of people (I'm generalizing, but please indulge me): those who plan ahead, and those who "play it by ear."

Most gear with presets are designed for those who plan ahead—thus the name "preset", because you are setting it ahead of time. With this gear, you can dial in your settings just so, without risk of changing anything that you have already saved. Then, some explicit action must be taken to store this into memory. These presets are recalled as needed; but when changing them on the fly, one must be diligent to explicitly store them if necessary.

For those who prefer to "play it by ear"—often changing settings on-the-fly—this paradigm doesn't work so well. The extra step of storing presets gets in the way and is perhaps even forgotten. Our preset methodology is designed for this person. (Maybe the name "preset" is misleading in this case; but it is the accepted standard, so we went with it.) Settings are stored instantly when knobs are turned, so there is no need to perform an extra step. If you are constantly tweaking your settings, this methodology works well.

One disadvantage with our methodology is that you can't go back to some golden reference setting. If you are like me, you may understand that it's all relative—to the venue, your audience, and how things sound to you at this moment—and having a reference setting may not mean much. Plus, with only a few knobs, it's not difficult or time-consuming to return to a known setting.

However, if you really want to dial in everything ahead of time and not change it at the gig, then our preset methodology is not for you. I don't have a problem telling you this; because ultimately, I don't want you to buy our gear if it's not right for you. There's plenty of other gear out there that may be a better fit. Please keep this in mind when choosing an effects pedal with presets.