A funny thing about the '68 reissue: it was always a total mess when turning it up above about 5 on either channel. The overdrive that it produced was unpleasant, and the whole thing rattled pretty badly and would actually start to produce weird resonant notes unrelated to the notes that I was playing. Not a recipe for a pleasant sound.
A few weeks ago, I got a Two Notes Torpedo and ran the 68DR into it with the speaker unplugged. Without the speaker and chassis involved, I think it sounds pretty damn awesome. I can really crank it and get nice sounding distortion/OD. So I think that my troubles were a combination of one or more slightly microphonic tubes, and the fact that a tube combo is just a torture chamber.
Having now experienced what a load box and speaker/cab/mic emulator can do, I'm hard pressed to recommend anything less for quiet/apartment electric guitar recording. But that's a topic for another thread...