Me too- my first amp was a large old 2x12 60 watt valve combo- called a Maestro (made by Gibson- I recently found out that it was designed and sold as an ACCORDIAN amp!!)
Therefore, the only sound available was incredibly CLEAN- unless every knob on it was turned up to 10!!- Not what I really wanted back then- as you say, nowadays, almost every amp is set up to sound distorted, even at low volumes- and it's very hard to get a loud clean tone...
We may have to seek out a couple of those older Roland Jazz Chorus amps?!
and sounded pretty poor. I often thought after the purchace, for the money I spent on it, I could have got a Marshall valve top and four by twelve cabinet for pretty much the same cost and have a guaranteed good sound out of it live. I could have done with that extra volume too as we were a loud band and I often got drowned out by the bass players Trace Elliot and the Keyboard players set up 