There must have been something wrong with either your old Miracle Man or your pots (maybe it was the Les Paul Custom, my miracle man sounded strange in my buddys LPC too) but I have a miracle man set in my Gibson Gothic Explorer and it is just 1:1 THE machine head tone through my peavey 6505 and with a TS in front!!!
The Miracle man just excells for this kind of low tuned metal in my Gothic EX (Machine Head, In Flames, As I lay Dying). It's really suprising but the Gothic with MM sounds more like Machine Head than my Gibson Flying V with EMG (which was intended as my *Machine Head* guitar^^)