Am I missing something with amps?

[Eric***]

Hello wonderful fretters,

I have a question for anyone who understands amps, as I no longer think I do. I understand the thing about how, when an amp is turned up and really humming, you can feel the notes and it responds to the playing intensity and all of that. I understand how saturated power tubes produce great tone, etc. I've plugged electric guitars in to sound boards directly before, and I understand how ugly a naked electric guitar tone can be, so I see the need for tone modifications from the amplifier. I think I understand how compression can help make the tone warmer.

What I don't understand is where I should be looking for simple amplification. Many guitar amplifiers (heck, pretty much all of them) involve some level of tone coloring, making your guitar's output more sexy and listenable. However, many of the applications for which I want to use amps have all of the tone stuff done before the amp, and I just want the amp to bring the signal from line level to another level (headphone, speaker, etc.) -- no compression, no EQ, no tube simulation, nothing.

So the question: why is this so hard? Am I looking at guitar amps when I should be looking at some other sort of amplifier? If so, what am I supposed to look for?

Example of my confusion: even the little headphone amps like the Vox amplug have different versions (AC30, metal, acoustic, etc.), which I'm guessing give you different tones. It's a fricking headphone amp! Just take my line out signal from a pedal and make it headphone friendly!

I think this is just a last attempt to figure out why I seem to be banging my head against a wall continually. I figure there must be these direct amplifiers out there somewhere, so why I can't seem to find them is confusing to me.