Chinese V30 and Mesa voiced V30 are night and day. Mesa is darker, Chinese is much brighter. I replaced one of the speakers in my OS cab with Chinese one just to get a brighter tone when I want it.
Using a cab and an amp on speech level will never get you there in my opinion. Generally speaking, you should be able to get it loud enough to set your mic pre to 35 db of gain, when using sm57. OR LESS. I got my best results with 5150 and Mesa cab with two tubes in the poweramp and post gain at 3. Using attenuator might be an option. Also, re-soldering your cab and running only one speaker might be another option if you have to be quiet.
Speaking of searching for tones - divide your aim into separate sub-aims. Check gain structure, check tuning, check the mids and the lows. Then compare upper mids and high frequencies. Using match eq is good for learning. Compare, match, move the mic, compare, match, move the mic. Even if it won't get you 100% there, you will find the tones you'll prefer to the others (and maybe even to your reference clip).
Besides... I once had two mesas in my studio - one brand new, borrowed it from my friend, I recorded a couple of albums through it so it was broken in already. Another one - really old, bought it on e-bay. The difference in sound was huge, literally like between the Chinese V30 (new mesa) and Mesa-voiced V30 (old one).
Now, another thing about EQ-ing. Words "nothing drastic on EQ" may mean "3db narrow cut in 2.2k" which DOES make a difference. "two small cuts in between 4.4k and 5.8k" make a huge difference too. So think about it too.
lol ozone
