I have to agree with the fact that there are some axe users who have more convincing axe funk wah patches than the edge's, however I didn't mind his tone in the last tour.
As far as the album version vs live version, to me the key is the fact that the studio version probably uses a clean guitar into A3 into a cranked amp (you can tell by the distortion on the reverb, which is the typical crunch you get when placing a reverb pedal into a crunchy amp), while the live version probably uses an od (possibly the fa1) into the A3 into a cleaner amp (by placing a boost / od before the A3 you're changing the swoosh and the reverb loses its character).