I feel like a massive IDIOT!!! (finding my amps sound)

I purchased a Blackstar Studio 20 from eBay a couple months ago for $350 (free shipping) pretty good deal huh?

So I've played it of course. Really cracked up that overdrive channel. The problem was that it was really high gain. Now, I like that sort of thing but I was also hoping, as this was my first tube amp, that it would sound a bit more "tubey", whatever that means. Someone on here mentioned that Blackstar uses diode clipping for the overdrive, so I was essentially just using a distortion pedal. This bummed me out. I know it's a high gain amp, but I wanted something that would sort of be in that middle ground.

Then MAGIC happened! After a couple months with the amp, rarely really getting to play with it as it's in a common space (we're moving soon and I'll have a dedicated "man-cave" area) I decided to really crank the clean channel. What made me think of it was a small Fender amp I messed around with once at Guitar Center that really only had a Tone and Volume knob and to get distortion, you just basically had to turn it the fuck up.

I have plenty of natural tube overdrive now. I've also found that I can roll back on the guitar's volume knob and maintain most of the amps volume and clean up the sound that way. I know I could have just asked on here, but it's so much more satisfying having figured it out on my own.