I almost always use the filter wheel and preset. After a while it's pretty easy to tell which wheel you need to be on if you are shooting in doc mode with no monitor.
I find the varicam preset to look pretty good generally.
If I do have a monitor and preset just doesn't look good, then I white balance. But, in my own personal subjective experience, white balancing doesn't always work. It often seems to make the image look even worse - so I go back to preset. Most of the stuff I shoot goes to tape to tape color correct anyway, so I'm less worried.
john