Amp Sim User Presets

Once upon a time when I was young I played my guitar through a distortion pedal direct into the mic input of a cassette tape.  It did not sound good.
 
Now, when I check out a lot of user presets for various amp sims, I am reminded of that sound.  And the really sad thing is, if there are comments in the user library, everyone is gushing over these tinny buzzy noisy sounds. 
 
I understand some allowances need to be made for different guitars and pickups, and not every tone will sound killer with every guitar.  On the other hand, if you get more noise than sound, or if the patch you are playing makes your humbuckers sound like an ungrounded no-name single coil pawnshop POS in an electrical storm, maybe that's just a bad patch.
 
 
 

mumpcake
Once upon a time when I was young I played my guitar through a distortion pedal direct into the mic input of a cassette tape.  It did not sound good.
 
Now, when I check out a lot of user presets for various amp sims, I am reminded of that sound.  And the really sad thing is, if there are comments in the user library, everyone is gushing over these tinny buzzy noisy sounds. 
 
I understand some allowances need to be made for different guitars and pickups, and not every tone will sound killer with every guitar.  On the other hand, if you get more noise than sound, or if the patch you are playing makes your humbuckers sound like an ungrounded no-name single coil pawnshop POS in an electrical storm, maybe that's just a bad patch.
 
 
 

Try the S-Gear demo.

 

Mesh
Not everyone's going to have solid idea as to what a good tone is, and I'm guessing all these user presets will show that (the good, the bad, and the ugly ). After all, they/we are all using amp sims and most of us can only get so far/close to the real thing. Yeah, I also shake my head on some of these presets and just have to move along.

The original post was inspired by a trip to the Bias FX user library.  Even though they market it to mega-gainheads, it does have a lot of sounds that are useful to those of us who are not.
 
I don't think all of their factory and artist presets are winners, but the ones I don't like sound like reasonable attempts to make useful sounds.  Some of them might have worked if my guitar sounded similar to the one they were using.  Some I might have liked if I cared for the genre.
 
The user library, however is hypersturgeonic.  I find it amazing that none of the contributors have any clue that what they are posting, has any resemblance to a tone that should be used on record.  No understanding of gain staging, level matching, use of noise reduction.  Just tinnyness and noise.
 
I think I was able to just shake my head and move along after the first few presets, but with the very low signal-to-noise ratio, it got to be disconcerting.  Surely that many people can't have so little of a clue?
 
 
 

Mesh
I was just going through some of the guitarists that endorsed PG's Bias amps and I like his tone.....BTW, he's also a SPLAT user and posts his tones in Tone Cloud.

I like his playing and his patches aren't bad either.
 
You are right that are some gems in the library, but it does take some effort to find them.  I still maintain the user library is hypersturgeonic.