Maybe I’m the only one who does this but do any of you use reference songs while creating your tones?
For me it’s not so much trying to match a specific tone but more to see how my tone sits in a mix.
Some of the references I use are:
Psychosocial - Slipknot
All I Wanted - Paramore
Welcome Home - Coheed and Cambria
Wild Blue - John Mayer
I’d be curious to see if anyone else does this and if so what your song choices for reference are.
Yeah this is an interesting topic… I like to try to stay organized… to an extent.
I have (currently) a preset folder for “clean” tones, and one for “distorted” tones… just so when I go digging through my stuff I have an idea where to look.
Now, when we do a show, I create a new “preset setlist” folder, and copy presets into there. Because our band covers alllll sorts of genres of music, I normally have to bring a couple guitars with me, and I tweak my presets according to our setlist, the guitar I’m going to use for that song/show. I also denote the preset in the setlist with the letter of the guitar I’m using so when I look back through my presets, I have the preset I used, for that guitar. (i.e. I - Ibanez, K - Kiesel, F - Fender and so on)
The amount of space taken for a preset is trivial. So, I normally start with a preset that I like for a song, then just start tweaking it according to what I’ll have to do… MOST of the time I’m using scenes so I can single-stomp to a bunch of changed settings at once.
In one setlist I have: “I - Even Flow” because I used my Ibanez. We did an acoustic set, so in that setlist I have “M - Even Flow” because I used my Martin acoustic and the tones I used were totally different
That’s a really clever way to organize yourself. I might copy that in the future.
However, my original intent was to start a discussion around songs people use to develop their tones. Similar in a way to how mix engineers have reference songs they use when mixing to ensure that their project sounds a certain way.
For me I like to use references as I build my tones so that I can be fairly confident my guitar will sit well in a mix; whether that be live or otherwise.
Ok well while I’m at it… here’s some of what I use 
Pearl Jam - Even Flow: because I use the FX loop for my wah, and in general I like a punchy, high-presence tone.
Pantera - Cemetery Gates: for the crunchies and artificial harmonics
Dire Straits - Sultans of Swing
White Zombie - I am Legend
Watching this thread: I’m interested both in your file management method and the song list for tone matching and sitting in the mix. Great topic.
Sultans is a great song. Quintessential quack tone in the original but the foundation is good enough to be able to develop a clean to mildly dirty tone over it.