if you’re using preset, just do "loadmess 1" to it (if preset #1 is your default state). You can also have a hidden preset to do just this, where user can click a "reset" button and restore these defaults, if they are a good starting point. Having the preset hidden will keep them from overriding it with their own; you can have a visible one for them to mess with, if you want. Or you can have the default preset be a number higher than what is accessible in the UI part of the preset, so it’s always available via a message, but not clickable.

No need to lose all those carefully-dialed settings, I know what you mean. a lot of times it’s even just to speed development and testing along…

and the "freeze attributes" is a different thing: the value stored by a slider is not an attribute, it’s the current value. a good place to poke into this is to click the left inlet of objects, check out the attributes/messages listings and think about the differences between the lists. though the jitter objects behave somewhat differently, they allow many more attributes to be set in the object description, with the @ notation. And many attributes aren’t listed in these popup lists, to keep things less cluttered…so you manage them in the Inspector.