IMO you have it exactly right, I feel the same way. A tele or 335 etc often just sounds like a textbook example of "electric guitar" whereas a strat sounds like a strat, and I mean that in a good way in both cases. Strats have various tones in terms of things that work well in certain parts of a song, but they all sound stratty. I'm sure you could change that with different non-traditional pickups, but it would defeat the purpose of owning a strat, to me.I guess, in my hands at least, it actually doesn't have the "most collection of tones".
If I record my tele, SG or ES-335, there are signature sounds I can get out of them, but I can also get them to overlap enough that on a recording I would have a hard time identifying what guitar was used. But with this strat, no matter how I dial it in, it is CLEARLY a strat in the recording. I have a hard time describing it other than to say that all 5 pickup positions are just VERY "stratty".
So I'm trying to figure out if my initial impression that it is a "great strat" is correct, or if maybe it's actually more limited in range than a truly great strat?