I think for a lot of people it comes down to the purity of it. To have to work within the confines of what was originally available at the time or as it was designed & produced.
I can understand that to a point, but, at the same time, isn't a modeler inherently "impure" ? By nature we are avoiding issues with needing a certain level of output volme to get the tone we want, we have routing options the original didn't have, we don't need to deal with tubes, maintenance, its easier to transport etc.
I have a camera app on my smart phone that simulates doing a wet plate process style of image. The end photo looks basically like those old style plates did, and it doesn't have any controls, BUT, does that mean its at all like actually taking a photograph using a 19th century method ? No, so I can't really say I'm doing "traditional" photography while working with my smartphone, I'm still doing mobile photography with modern tech.
If we really wanted, we could model lots of limitations into the software. We could make it so that once you powered the unit on, you need to wait in standby for a given length of time before playing. We could model a tube going microphonic, tubes dying etc.
Basically it would be possible to emulates a lot of annoying limitations of hardware, BUT, no one would really want that feature, so we don't do it. I mean come on.... show of hands,.... mandatory 15 minute standby warmup page upon power up ? No one would enjoy that I don't think.
As such, we are kind of picking and choosing when we want to be "authentic" or "pure" etc, but when it comes down to it, its still all and all pretty darn modern.
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