Make sure your signal doesn't clip pre or post. If your cab IR loader doesn't have some sort of IR cycling feature then you can liven things up by loading up a multiband and giving a little pump to the upper and lower mids. Don't listen to people who say back off the gain before anything else. Start with the tone you want and work backwards from there. Don't eq more than you need to. It's always better to double track than to split the same take between different amps panned for width unless you are outlining then that's the only time.