I hope I won't get ragged by the senyors here in the gigging industry, particularly those who do 3 sets a night of covers, 50% of which they ciphered the night before. I respect you, and I am proud that you are so-called HUMAN JUKEBOXES.
But here's my gripe... just because you have the talent (I repeat, YOU have the talent), it doesn't mean that you have the tone. Oftentimes, when I come across a showband/coverband guitarplayer who tries to mimic old and new repertoire on a crappy Marshall MG30 or Fender Princeton 65 onstage, my impression would always be "Wow, he has the fingers, but his tone sucks because of the friggin' amp..." And to compensate for that, you hear a lot of compression in the tone. Thank God digital modelling has made it much less ear-stabbing in the distortion department compared to the days of stomps through SS amps that sounded like a swarm of bees.
Experience pretty much trains a guitarplayer how to adjust to the gear (whatever is there onstage) and how to dial in sounds to least unacceptable standards. But don't claim that because you can do that, you have great tone. Maybe the better way to interpret your skill is, you know how to OPTIMIZE the gear onstage.
Say you plugged through a crappy Marshall MG30, and had a lagare to Ratsky (uy that was so 10 years ago) where you plug to a Twin Reverb, you'd notice a huge improvement in your tone compared to the MG30.
So the be-all and end-all is, THE WHOLE SIGNAL CHAIN MATTERS. Player-->gtr-->-->fx-->AMP* *often neglected.