Great examples.

The sound of some Fender amps was also painstakingly designed, including modifying wire routing and similar tweaky considerations.

I have heard guitars before and after various tweaks, such as adding interior copper shielding that changed the sound.

The mods possible on guitars are seemingly endless.

My experience as a listener agrees with you; the amp emulations don't seem to get it right. You know what they are hinting at but it is just a hint. They have got to be fun to play with however.

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- Wire makes a difference-- Guitar Player magazine has gotten a lot of crap lately for this one, but even the most scientific people who've looked into it (like Bill Lawrence, the pickup designer) have concluded that the capacitance in a guitar cable makes a major difference to the sound.

My experience with musicians is similar to that with audiophiles, they either believe it or they don't. The British magazine Guitar Techniques has their column "What strings do you use?" where they ask well known players their preferences in gear and set up. Most players tend towards the belief cables make a difference but most also acknowledge they don't care that much whether they do or not. Yet a guitarist can obssess over the thickness and shape of their pick, bridge pin material and whammy bar springs while ignoring more obvious contributions to overall sound.

I don't think you'll find many people in disagreement with the idea that high capacitance cables affect the sound.

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- Tubes sound better than solid state. Yes, we're talking distortion here, but even the often quite good digital emulations of tube amps in the guitar world do not feel right when you're playing through them.

Possibly, that's due to the fact too many designers of such devices come at "tube sound' from a perspective that says it all boils down to "distortions", which it does not. Recently, I had a player explain his preference for hard wired amps because, according to him, they sound more like tube amps.