This happens with "real" amps too (and guitars, for that matter). One of the guys I toured with a few years ago kept going to Marshall amps and Gibson guitars for some reason...but he could never get the tone he was after. Eventually I had him play around with my Egnater MOD50, which had various modules based on Fender-type circuits, along with Mesa type sounds, Marshall, Vox, etc. He loved the Fender based ones (with 6L6s) the most. He went out and bought a Fender and loved it, and has been happy with it ever since. He then borrowed my Rick Kelly for a couple of months and ended up buying himself a tele. So what ended up working best for him was dramatically different than what he THOUGHT would work best for him.
My point is, sometimes we just get things in our head that "x, y, or z is what I want", and become afraid to try anything else. Some of my favorite tones come from guitars and/or amps (even/especially in the Axe) that I would never have tried under normal circumstances. One of my favorite current go-to tones under Q2 is with the Band Commander and a FOD overdrive in front of it, bridge pickup with the tone knob rolled all the way off. Creates this singing, haunting kind of tone that I LOVE. I might post a clip of it soon. But...never would have thought to try that combination normally. Just playing around with stuff almost always pays dividends, IMO.
Most of this isn't necessarily relevant to what you guys were talking about, lol, I just thought I'd chime in and share one of the reasons I love the Axe. The great flexibility allows me to try things I wouldn't have access to with the "real" amp counterparts. It's awesome.
