You know that feeling when you're browsing preset libraries at 2 AM, downloading anything with a promising name? "ULTIMATE METAL DESTRUCTION." "John Mayer But Actually Good This Time." We've all been there.
I started wondering what actually makes a preset popular. Not in a hand-wavy "good tone" sense—I wanted to know specifically. Which amps? Which effects? How much reverb? So I downloaded the top 250 most-downloaded Helix Floor presets, wrote a script to crack them open, and analyzed every block, parameter, and signal chain decision inside.
The amps
The most popular amp is actually a three-way tie—each appearing in 17 presets:
- PV Panama (the 5150)
- Jazz Rivet 120 (Roland JC-120)
- Cali Rectifire (Mesa Rectifier)
High-gain metal and pristine cleans dominate. The middle ground—your Fender Deluxes, your AC30s—is less represented than I expected. People seem to want extremes.
A third of all presets use multiple amps (83 out of 250). Wet/dry setups, channel switching, A/B comparisons—the Helix makes it easy, and people take advantage.
Effects
The Scream 808 appears in 95 presets—38% of everything I analyzed.
Forty years after its invention, that green box is still the default choice for pushing an amp into saturation. I don't know why I expected anything different.
The LA Studio Comp beating out all other compressors is interesting. That smooth, optical LA-2A-style compression just works on guitar—transparent enough to leave on all the time, musical enough to actually hear what it's doing.
And yes, the Minotaur (Klon Centaur) appears in 60 presets. At $5,000+ for a real one, this might be the Helix's best value proposition.
Signal chain
I mapped out the average preset's signal flow.
Before the amp (avg 4.06 effects):
- Distortion/drive pedals (238 instances)
- Dynamics/compression (162 instances)
- Modulation (121 instances)
- Delay (96 instances)
Almost 100 presets put delay before the amp. I always thought of delay as a post-amp effect, but there's a whole world of Edge-style dotted-eighth shimmer where the repeats get crunched by the amp's distortion. Or slapback rockabilly vibes. More common than I realized.
After the amp (avg 3.39 effects):
- Reverb (187 instances)
- Delay (126 instances)
- EQ (116 instances)
- Modulation (102 instances)
Reverb and delay
The average delay mix is only 34%. The average reverb mix? Also 34%.
People aren't drenching their tones.
The reverb breakdown:
- Dry (<15%): 7 presets
- Subtle (15-35%): 189 presets
- Moderate (35-60%): 123 presets
- Drenched (>60%): 11 presets
Only 4% go full ambient-shoegaze. The overwhelming majority keep it tasteful. This was humbling—I've definitely been guilty of cranking the reverb to 50%+ and thinking it sounded "huge."
The snapshot paradox
Snapshots are one of the Helix's best features—change multiple parameters with one footswitch press, essentially giving you different scenes within a single preset. 63% of the top presets use them.
But presets with snapshots are actually less popular than presets without them.
- Presets with snapshots: average rank 135.9
- Presets without snapshots: average rank 107.6
That's a 28-position difference. I double-checked the numbers. They're right.
In the top 50 most-downloaded presets, only 46% use snapshots. In the bottom 50? 74%.
My theory: simplicity sells. When someone downloads a preset, they want to plug in and play. Snapshots add friction—you need to understand what each one does, read the description, maybe watch a YouTube video. A preset that just sounds good immediately is more satisfying to more people.
This doesn't mean snapshots are bad. It means snapshot presets need exceptional documentation to compete with plug-and-play simplicity.
What correlates with popularity?
I ran correlation analysis on every feature I could measure against download ranking.
Features correlated with MORE downloads:
Features correlated with FEWER downloads:
The wah correlation makes sense—wah is fun, expressive, interactive. Same with the looper (practice utility) and footswitch assignments (gig-ready). People want presets that do something.
The Brit Plexi Brt deserves special mention. It's the popularity amp—presets using it average rank 79.5, versus 128 for presets without it. Classic rock tones have universal appeal.
I don't have a great explanation for why noise gates correlate negatively. Maybe it signals a certain over-engineering mentality? Maybe the presets that need aggressive gating are solving problems that shouldn't exist in the first place? I'm genuinely not sure.
What we're not using
Some notable absences:
- Only 18% use IRs instead of native cabs. Stock cabs are apparently good enough for most people.
- Only 6.4% use filter effects. Auto-wahs and envelope filters are rare.
- Only 5.6% use Send/Return blocks. The "four cable method" crowd is a small minority.
What I took away from this
The Tube Screamer works. There's a reason 38% of the most popular presets include one, and I'm going to stop second-guessing it.
Reverb and delay should probably be lower than my instinct says. 34% is the sweet spot, apparently. I've been overdoing it.
Snapshots are powerful but add friction. If I'm going to use them, I need to document them well—or accept that the preset won't have the same plug-and-play appeal.
Interactivity matters. Wah, looper, footswitch assignments—presets that invite you to do something rank higher than passive tone-delivery systems.
And simplicity sells. The urge to add one more compressor, one more EQ block, one more safety-net noise gate—maybe I should resist it more often.
I'd love to dig deeper into this stuff. How do parameter values correlate with popularity? Are there distinct clusters of preset styles? How has the meta changed over time as new firmware added models?
If you've got theories about the noise gate thing, I'd like to hear them.
Analysis based on the top 250 most-downloaded Helix Floor presets. Presets were parsed programmatically from .hlx JSON files.