I've drunk that kool-aid too. Although in fairness, my points of comparison before I got the Shuttle are a long succession of clean sounding solid-state heads*, none of which I miss at all; I probably would've been much happier tone-wise with a big heavy tube amp, but when I was gigging I had neither the money to buy one nor the will to carry it around.
* The two other amps I ever owned with tooooobs were an Eden WT-300 and Eden WT-500, and that single tube in the Eden preamp circuit is not really there for overdrive purposes. I'm not actually sure what purpose it serves! They're really nice clean-sounding heads, but I don't know why it took me so long to figure out I didn't really want a clean-sounding head for my basic sound. The other amps I owned were, in order, Roland Cube 60, Peavey TNT-130, Randall something-or-other, GK 400RB, Eden WT-500, Eden WT-300, Acoustic Image Clarus, Acoustic Image Focus, Thunderfunk 440 (?), Acoustic Image Focus III. Not a dirty-sounding amp in the lot. Well, you could theoretically turn up the gain on the Peavey, but I recall that being pretty horrible. The gain on the Shuttle works great for me.
