I was listening to an interview with a mix engineer where the engineer said, "we don't get paid for creating buses, tracks and other technical approaches in a project file, we get paid for our artistic way of modifying the song and taking it to a whole new level".. he was talking about having a solid template already created with the effects (to manipulate later for that song) that would fit most songs and he mentioned that, he has a template where when he drags the wave files into, it already sounds good to begin with because of prebuilt template. 
I am not saying one size fits all..but would love to know, what you guys have in your template that you use for almost every song/project you record or mix.
Would be awesome if someone would share their template...but that may be asking too much..
One thing I found interesting (from the interview) was, all his tracks have 'Console Emulator' and 'Tube Saturation' preadded at a certain settings (turned on). 
 
Thanks
Shahed

I don't go that far, but then again I don't use SONAR on a daily basis.
My template has all the softsynths and outboard gear I typically use (but softsynths disabled, outboard gear in "Archive").  However with all available outputs of the synth plugins.  I use the template as a "choice box" and delete all unnecessary tracks towards the end of the project.  I also just have a "one size fits all" ProChannel, which gets edits/adds/deletes as I go along.

• My vocal template has (in this order) the PC-2A, QuadCurve EQ, Breverb, and Console Emulator.
• Bass has Concrete Limiter, Tube distortion, QuadCurve EQ, and Console Emulator.
• The guitar one is for multiband distortion and it's really hairy. It loads a track, four buses for multiband processing with a Sonitus multiband compressor in each one functioning as a crossover, and a fifth bus that the four buses dump into. It doesn't open with distortion because I have my choice of "secret sauce" distortion sounds that I choose based on the application. This gets loaded into each of the four buses.

Every time I use a different drum kit - whether stock or made from cells I drag into Battery 3, I always split each cell off to its own audio outputs, set each cell's relative volume to some reasonable starting point, and save the kit off as a custom kit.
 
I then set up a track folder for drums in Sonar, with a single midi track for all drum data, and separate audio tracks for each kit piece, insert track icons, give them all appropriate names, etc.
 
I then create a main drums bus, and additional sub-buses for toms, cymbals, snare, etc.. that all feed the main drums bus, which itself feeds the master bus.
 
I then save all of the above off as a track template, in a drums track template folder, for later inclusion in future projects.
 
I have some stock setups for commonly used instruments in Kontakt, that have things like, Piano, Organ, Strings, Bass, and all of the audio and midi tracks, and that will get saved as a track template as well.  I have track templates in Kontakt for entire strings sections, and brass sections, as well.
 
Hope that helps, 
 
Bob Bone
 

I forgot to mention that, like Craig, I also have some effects in the templates, BUT, the effects in the templates are ones meant only for tracking, and not the real-deal mixing/mastering templates.
 
I do the above so that I can hear basic reverb and EQ, but since I am starting with tracking, the particular effects used are ones that do not induce lots of latency, or chew up lots of CPU.  THOSE effects get added during the mixing process.
 
Lastly, I tend to use lots of track templates, rather than project templates, as this gives me way more choices.  I can play mix and match with whatever combination of drums and instruments are needed, and it only requires a small number of mouse clicks to pull in whatever combo of track templates are needed, for a given project.
 
To a client - it makes you look a bit more on the ball, when you can quickly pull together a lot of the mundane stuff, like routing assignments for drum kit pieces and such, and that is always a good thing.
 
Bob Bone
 
 

For band work, I have a template which contains all the tracks I am likely to use (drums, bass guitar, lead guitar, clean guitar, 2 or 4x rhythm guitars) and buses for each of those categories (since Sonar steadfastly refuses to let me manage them as a group without setting up buses), but the only effects I have in there are for processing the drums, which are from Superior Drummer 2, because I record the guitars with effects already applied.
 
For soundtracks, I have 2 orchestral templates - one is an approximation of the full orchestra (ensembles of the main instrument sections plus a handful of useful solo instruments), but one is a very cut-down version for writing songs - a full string section, and a piano. The combination of short sounds and sustained sounds, spread across the whole octave range, is usually enough to test out any musical motifs before splitting out voices into the orchestra proper.