I've never actually heard one of these things that I can recall. (The cabs are great, though; better made than the standard Marshall cabs, too, as they have ply backs rather than the particle board backs on the standard cabs. And no, the standard cabs are
not all particle board.)
I started to hear, after the initial bashing died down after their release, that they're not actually terrible per se, no moreso than the Valvestates, as that's pretty much what they are, just obscenely overpriced.
I would suspect, if they're pretty much a Valvestate in a different headshell, that keeping the mids up high, the treble backed off a bit, and making sure you're running through a good cab would probably do the trick for a decent solid-state metal crunch. I wouldn't expect it to sound phenominal, but I'd be surprised if you couldn't at least coax a passable tone out of that thing.
If +mids, -treble (and probably backing off the gain!) doesn't work, than... well, patch a Pod XT through the effects return, I guess.
