Tone is mostly technique which all the gear in the world won't address.

But, to emulate a sound you should never use a preset, recipe or the like. Firstly, they are never right. Secondly, you'll never learn anything.

You should never develop the tone you want to emulate "outside" of the mix. That is to say, stand-a-lone. If you do it will never sit the mix or sound right on playback even though you "think" it is right by itself.

Listen carefully to something that you imagine has lots of distortion like Hendrix and a wall of Marshall's. Now listen carefully to a Hendrix song and realize that it's about a quarter of the distortion you initially perceived.

Grab a Santana mp3 that you know how to play. Bring it in your daw as track 1. Arm track 2 for recording. Insert a guitar vst and get something playable. Record and play along with the track. You are recording dry BTW. The vst is your sound which you can adjust again AFTER you lay down the track. After you lay down your track go back and listen. Adjust the vst to fit the sound you are hearing in the mp3. It may surprise you when you look at the choices you dialed in to match the sound you were hearing in the mp3.

DTuna