No, I mean, I agree completely Eric...just meant that even when playing at full blast/drive, there may be some differences only apparent in that situation...sure, using loads of gain and volume usually drowns out subtleties in the sound, but then again, it conversely may reveal a tendency of a pickup for ugly feedback for instance, which might be not apparent with lower volumes and such.

I'm big on volume/intensity change myself, having had most of my crucial music development around the dawn of the grunge era...I want great changes in intensity and style in my band's playing. In fact sometimes I think there's too much, and it becomes really hard to translate that to recording.

Just now I'm mixing drums for our next 3-song demo, and there's a problem with the snare because it changes a LOT in volume...really hard to compress and mix the drums properly when the volume changes so much. But that's how it should be...only, real hard to combine a modern powerful sound and huge changes in the recorded material's volume.