Trying to use plugs to make up for unacceptable source conditions is a fool's errand, regardless of where one is recording, and frankly the quicker the average home recordist takes that to heart, they better off they and their recordings will be.
The fact is the market is flooded with plugs that'll do (or claim to do) just about everything from fix your kitchen sink to improve you're sex life. There one main reason for that; because plugs are cheap to make, even cheaper to distribute, and easy to sell to an uninformed public. They are mostly baloney.
The proof is in the pudding. After having been around this racket since before the days of digital, IME the quality of the average home recording frankly hasn't changed all that much in the last thirty years. The different ways we can bend, fold and mutilate our recordings and the number of tracks we can do that to have skyrocketed, all without any real increases in overall cost, relatively speaking. And that's wonderful. But the end result isn't really all that much better.
It's just like golf. Just look at how high-tech golf club and golf ball technology have gotten in the last twenty years. So what? The average golf score today is no different than it was 20 or 30 years ago, the average golfer still tees up his old, used balls when there's a water hazard to shoot over, and will three-putt just as much with their $300 plutonium putter as they would with my father's low-tech Mashee.
That said, the idea that the only good way to get depth in a recording is at the source is myopic. Sure it's a key way and a great way to do it, but the use of simple volume (lower it), EQ (filter the high end) and verb (only in concert with the first two) can go a looong way to creating depth in a recording. But it's not going to be because of the plugs (and certainly not because of any fancy plugs), but because the man behind the curtain knows what they are doing. If one get a birdie, it's not because of the putter, but because of the golfer.
G.
I understand what you're saying about getting it right at the source. We've got to make the best of what we got. I don't think I'll ever get my acoustic to sound the way I want, but I'll keep trying.