When my trusty Jekyll&Hyde od+distortion sadly kicked the bucket, I needed a new distortion. My budget was a bit limited at that time too so I decided to try the "Vintage Tube Monster", you know, atleast for a while before I can get a decent one. It was so cheap I didn't really had anything to lose.
But I've used it for about nine months now, didn't need to replace it at all! Great organic sounding distortion with a nice tube amp distortion feeling (you can roll down the guitar volume knob and it cleans a bit, very nice to adjust your tone on the fly!). I think it really excels at medium gain saturated rhythm and lead tones, but you can get nice crunch tones too. I've mostly used it in alternative rock music and it fits these kinds of genres nicely.
My only two complains are that it hogs a big space in your pedal board, and that it came with a broken tube. Luckily I had spare cheap tubes lying around and it sounds pretty good with them too. I didn't bother asking for a replacement tube since it seemed to be a cheap chinese tube anyway. And regarding the size: it does feel positively sturdy though, so not a huge problem unless you are low on extra space.
Anyway, for the pricepoint, you can't really go wrong: great sounds and it even has a noise gate for those particularly noisy single coils you might have.
