It's a pain in the ass is what it is haha. It takes me way longer to get the tones right, but I just always find myself way happier afterward. I was thinking about this just last night, that I live in this 500 square foot apartment, so I can't play a tube amp, so the tone I'm always going for is a fantastic recorded tone. Those tones, from albums whose engineering I love, are always fucked with so much. It was watching Pensado's Place that made me realized just how very very much a lot of mixing engineers alter tracks, with EQ after EQ after compressor after another compressor, etc. Whatever it takes to get feel right for the music they're working on. And I thought: Well, what the Hell am I doing just thinking an IR, captured with someone else's mic placement, from a spot they thought was good with their guitar, their playing style, in their room, was going to be picture perfect for me right out of the gate? Why am I not doing what I know a lot of mixing engineers do to make guitars sound fantastic on a record? I know I can EQ no problem, and I have a million of them in the Axe-FX III, so why not just try it in the most ridiculous way? So I set up a basic preset that I liked, and I experimented adding one EQ, then another, then another, adding Smoothing and Proximity in the Cab Block, reducing the size of the IR, etc, until it just felt perfect. I just felt more nuance, power, and well, feel, from the tone that I had with just the IR alone, even though I loved the preset as it had been. But comparing them before and after? The heavily EQ'd version was a million times better in my mind.
But of course, again, there are no rules, and it doesn't matter if you just use this as your style, not to use an IR into FRFR. That's fine and totally cool and unique. For me cleans are still gainy, just in the highs and lows instead of the mids, giving the impression of clean with the actuality of gain, and the character of the cab is so integral to that. For the kind of cleans you go for, it may be a different thing altogether. Judging from what you posted, you certainly don't need anyone telling you how to set your tones. If they feel right, they are right.