I just realized a terrible tone sucking mistake that I have been making. I had two almost identical presets and one sounded dead next to the other. It turns out that i had split from row 1 into row 2 and had the amp there. I didn’t realize that a split is parallel by default and half of the signal was missing the amp altogether and hence the preset sounded deadened.
So, if you want a split to be serial, make sure route A is disabled. https://youtu.be/OiRoMqO75EU?si=p9QK7DCp9hYtWKvf explains pretty well in case others are as dumb as i am 