The one thing that everyone needs to know about tone is that it's different for everyone... and it's generally impossible to get the exact tone that some guys do without having a ton of expensive pieces of gear...

Tone is strange... different people will approach it different ways because everyone has certain ideas of what they want in tone and what sounds good... They also have different ideas about which effects or settings they favor... One person might use a distortion pedal where as another person may use the distortion channel on their amp... which will produce two different distorted sounds... Then you have the different amps... not only do different preamps sound differently... but so do the speakers that pump out the sound... There are literally hundreds of parameters that come into effect when dealing with tone... People scooping mids, boosting treble, flanging the distortion or distorting the flange, putting the wah before the chain, using two wahs locked in opposite positions... or one locked and one for the effect, using ceramic magnet pickups versus alnico pickups, humbuckers versus singles, heavy strings to light strings, mahogany versus alder/poplar/ash, tube amp versus solid state, amp models versus the real thing, multi effects processors, compressors, noise gates, speaker cabinet construction, guitar settings, amp settings, pedal settings, over wound pickups, underwound pickups, inphase/out of phase, split coils, sustainers, treble bleeds, neck/mid/bridge pickup position, tremolo versus hardtail, locking nut versus standard nut, bone/plastic/brass nuts.......... I could keep going... there are way too many things that adversly effect tone to realistic reproduce a tone exactly..... So what I'm saying is... use all the gear that you have to try and get as close as possible... 90% of tone knowledge comes from messing around with your own gear... Mess around so that you know exactly what happens when you crank the treble... versus turning the bass way down... or what happens when you use crank the treble and use the neck pickup.... mess around and see what works for you.

__________________
Expect all your life to be let down, and to say goodbye to friends you've found... Becuase we both will have to leave this town, for better lives.

One other note to consider, most people agree that the majority of "TONE" comes straight from.....................you guessed it your very own fingers. So technique and proper execution of a solo or phrase is CRITICAL to the final sound. Little things like playing a note on a different string from what the (likely incorrect in most of my experiences) tab says. Proper amount of pressure on the strings etc etc. These are the intangables that no amp or effect can every overcome. The only solution is................you guessed it practice and careful listening to the sound you are getting real time.