After a singer updated to Logic Pro 12, his go-to Fuzz Vocal preset was still in Logic’s library, but Apple had reworked it with a different layout, a different set-up of plug-ins and a slightly different sound.
He got in touch because the preset he relied on no longer gave him the sound he knew. Fuzz Vocal normally sits in the vocal presets section of Logic’s own library, and he knew exactly what he wanted from the previous, legacy version. In Logic 12 it was laid out differently and the plug-ins that make up the sound were configured differently, so it wasn’t what he was expecting. He was frustrated, and wanted the old version back.
What Apple changed in Logic Pro 12
With Logic Pro 12, Apple made some decisions about how presets are laid out, and removed some of the legacy content. I can understand why. It makes Logic friendlier for new users, pointing them towards useful ideas for their projects instead of mountains of presets. The trouble is that musicians have been using Logic for twenty or thirty years, and some of the presets they reach for have either disappeared or been edited.
I did some research on the latest developments and explained to him what had happened. The old version of Fuzz Vocal was no longer on his Mac, because it had been overwritten when Logic 12 was installed. The name was the same, but what loaded was Apple’s new version. When I wrote this up in February 2026 there were already people posting online about the same thing, and other presets may well have changed for other users too.
An old project that used the preset can still give you the legacy version, because you can save it from that project into your own user library.
Getting the old version back
There were two ways to do it. One was to go to a Time Machine backup, find the copy of Logic 11, take the preset files out of the back end of that installation and put them into Logic 12, which would restore the legacy presets. The other was to open one of his old projects that used Fuzz Vocal and use the save function in the Library to save that preset into his user library folder.
We didn’t have a copy of Logic 11 to hand, and there were only a couple of presets he really wanted, so I recommended the second method. He agreed it was probably the best solution.
It’s an annoying decision by Apple, but it isn’t an unsolvable problem. If a favourite preset sounds wrong after moving to Logic 12, look for an old project that used it before you go digging through backups.
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