I agree to an extent. But to me, Dead Heart in a Dead World sounds NOTHING like Surgical Steel or The Gathering.
I like Andy's tones, personally. But my favorite from him aren't usually 5150. One of my favorite is Shadows Are Security, but even if it's from the same era and more or less style of music, it's the complete opposite of The End of Heartache, which I do like, but to me, isn't as be-all-end-all as everyone says it is.
But I do agree with you. The standard OD808-5150-Recto cab tones get stale after a while. But there's many ways you can dial those in too. rEVOLVEr (not an Andy mix), for example, sounds nothing like The Poison. At least IMO.
I guess we're about to get into the mids debate again, LOL. We all like what we like, so that's totally respectable. I didn't mean to say the LOG tone was bad. I particularly like the drum tone they have going on, but I've never dug those guitars. I will admit, though, the way they remixed that record was such an improvement over the original! I particularly like how some of the guitar "thinness" (or at least that's how I perceive it) lets the bass tone sound so menacing and the drums so big.