Your demo is a real eye (ear) opener.
It clearly shows how mic placement can make or break (or color) a profile.
If you remember, could you share what the differences in placement were, corresponding to each segment of the demo?
This could be very helpful if we hear something in one of the segments that we would like to achieve, or avoid, in a profile.
I started in the opposite direction (the last part of the sound sample was my first try).
This is a far miked position which worked well for some of my small old vintage Fender (open back) combos.
The second one is another far miked position I use for combos.
I was not able to capture the 'amp in a room sound' of an open back combo when I close mike it.
But the amp I was profiling is a closed back combo - so it does not work - compared to the real amp does it lack bass and there is much to much treble - and some 'strange' coloring.
So I placed the mic closer to the amp, at different angles and more or less centered - until I found the sound as close as possible to the amp sound.
I found that clean sounds are more forgiving when searching for the best profiling mic placement - so I use distorted sounds when ever possible - and check later with clean sounds as well.
Note: This was only the mic placement - the other task before this is to select a mic - so it can easily need 50 or more profiles until I can start to create the profiles.
For me is this procedure the most time consuming part of my profiling sessions - and each amp seams to needs a different mic placement.
Have you ever changed the mic placement for refining, after the initial profiling was complete.
I wonder what the effects would be if you first took the initial profile, and then refined 2,3, or 4 times, each time changing the mic position?
Has anyone tried this
No I never did this - since the 'refine' process is some kind of final 'eq matching' I would expect that the result would be close to the result I would get if I would place the mic at the refine position.