I dot mean to sound cocky, but if you knew me and my background, I graduated at Berkelee with full scholarship and won the guitar dept. award 3 times, I play guitar, bass, drums, piano and cello, i've directed orchestras, I've recorded and performed with a few major artists and for tv shows in Italy and have been playing in U2 tributes throughout Europe for 15 years, so I'm not a bedroom player inquiring about pre vs post delay!
Said that, I totally share your point of view, I agree that a big part of the tone is always in the player's hands, and clearly we're talking about achieving a similar tone with all limitations we might have (in the specific case of the edge, I should remind you that he uses about 20 guitars per show, each one for a specific song because one might have the bridge pickup slightly higher than another for a specific song etc, and of course a strat with rw fingerboard tuned 1/2 step down with 11's is going to sound different from a strat with maple fb in standard tuning with 10's), and I'm trying to get there using only 4-5 guitars..
The thing is that, like you say, edge of break up means that picking harder drives the amp, and my problem with the ac30tb model is that even picking harder, the clean attack is still predominant, and that is awkward. We're talking about a subtle thing here, one that the average guitarist / listener wouldn't even notice, but since I know what a great piece of gear the axe is and what it's capable of, I knew something was wrong within the Vox model and I'm glad cliff has confirmed this and is working on the fix - and that's beyond sounding like the edge or else, the ultimate goal is sounding great as opposed to good!