i used to store "presets" on a sheet of paper, photocopied with my sh-101 controls layout, buggered if i can find them now tho... but seriously, i'm happy to use presets usually as a starting point but hey, if the shoe fits...

Presets are a good starting place but most need a minor tweak here or there so they sit right in the song or tune.
 
Nothing wrong with using presets if they work and as a couple of you have said above they are great learning tools and I agree taking off the FX first is a good start to actual what the preset is really all about.

In attempting to discover what advantages any given synth offers I'll always check the presets, but I also play and tweak ...this is what I like, no rules. I got some very interesting things from Z3Ta+2 in this way. Sometimes the names of presets help to get me close to a sound I might like, but sometimes the opposite it true. "Violin" is usually pretty descriptive, but something like " Planetary Wonk"  throws me for a loop....I can see a bored programmer working overtime to come up with 500 patches and names for all of them. OTOH if none of the synths had patches wouldn't it be a more bland world? This is the kind of thing I could see some Scandanavian designer doing. It would be touted as simplistic, sleek and sell a million copies :). I mean...some of those synth  patches are sometimes really good. The difference I suppose, in a good namer/programmer and a not so good one.
 
The Korg M-1 is a good example of a synth that had way too many etherial atmosphereic patches IMO. If you want background stuff those presets have them... angels, bells, water sounds...sleepy string patches. But the M-1 can also excel at in your face sound....I think Korg wanted to bring out their effects section and what better way than to use a lot in their presets. And to me this is the problem which others have already mentioned...effects added to synths. One of the worst offenders in a mix if you want it clean and clear. I wish these synth makers would have one button on their interface...FX off.
 
I love the idea of creating and storing presets myself to recall later on..and I can name them anything I want :)

My usual MO is to find a preset that's close and tweak.  The problem is that I have accumulated so many soft-synths that I have become a master of none.  If I get to know one well enough to do some effective tweaking, six months later, some other instrument has caught my fancy I it's now the one I know well enough to do some expert sound manipulation.
 
That was one thing good about the "good old days".  Hardware keyboards and rack-mount sound modules were so expensive that you only could afford a few and you could get to know those very well.  I used to know the M3R (sort of a rack mount M1) like the back of my hand.  Now when I pull up an M1 soft-synth patch, I have to flail around like a fool before I figure out how to get the result I'm looking for.  Ah, the good old days!
 
By the way, I totally agree with the OP about Nori Ubukata's classic synths series.  Absolutely fabulous - so much so, these add-on sound sets completely justify the purchase of SynthMaster IMO.
 

Not much to add, Dave, other than a big old "+1".   So may cool synths, so many presets, so little time.   Which is a big reason why I can barely remember half the time which one had what sound.  And then a new one comes along...
 
Having started with a MS-10 and a Polysix, I loves me some presets.  As long as they're good/inspirational/usable, and not necessarily in that order.
 

I have always found the concept of ragging on presets analogous to ragging on a guitar player for not having his/her guitar custom built. I know it's not an exact analogy,  but close enough. I admit I still get annoyed when i hear the same fad synth patches used over and over in pop music, but am learning to just accept it as being no different than many artists preferring the same piano or  guitar. I could pick up Clapton's guitar and still not sound like him. I am working with one of the most talented people i know in the studio this evening and i have never seen him so much as teak a preset and his finished compositions come out better than most.

Some presets are just fine to use and other than maybe killing some reverb or delay or something, I may use them as is. Others are a starting point and require more in depth tweeking. And sometimes I'll just start from scratch and make entirely new ones.
 
If you're using any type of modern day rompler, having tons of presets is a good thing. With all the hundreds of different wavs to start with that something like a Motif would include, plus using up to 4 of them to create a patch, (not to mention all the fx, multiple LFO's and controllers) the choices are large, and a great deal of time can/will be wasted. Programming a patch on a basic analog synth is a heck of a lot easier.

sharke
Plugging a Les Paul into an Orange amp is a "preset."

To play the devil's advocate, Would you leave the knobs on the amp and guitar exactly as they were when you unpacked it?

Glyn Barnes

sharke
Plugging a Les Paul into an Orange amp is a "preset."

To play the devil's advocate, Would you leave the knobs on the amp and guitar exactly as they were when you unpacked it?

No, but adjusting the gain, bass, treble etc could quite reasonably be described as "tweaking a preset." My point was that there seems to be a certain amount of snobbery in some quarters about the use of synth presets, with some people who think that you're "cheating" unless you build your sounds from scratch. But picking up a guitar that's been pre-built to have a certain sound and plugging it into an amp that's been pre-built to have a certain sound is totally accepted. Nobody complains that guitar player X uses the same guitar/amp combination as player Y, and nobody expects you to build a guitar and amp from scratch. What's important is the music which comes from their fingers. 

I'm not seeing any posts in this thread saying you shouldn't use presets. Or are you referring to the forum in general.