Right, had a quick go and I thought I might be able to do it by putting something on the set up bar of my template - notes on all the sounds with drums. set vol to zero and run this with the other set up bars before I use the template. Doesn’t seem to work - firstly Cubase doesn’t seem to save the drum visibility setting and the setting seems to last just for the event and not for the whole track.
Thanks for the suggestion though.