On the other hand, the conversations on GS and MW concerning bad boards, oscillator bleed and poor customer service have me gun shy.
There are a handful of people who
really don't like Modal, and they make a lot of noise.
I have a 002, one of the first batch of 50 made, bought in August 2014. My experience with Modal has been quite different: they've been exceptionally helpful, and every last problem I've raised has been fixed.
...the sound just feels it's lacking it's own character.
You may have been hearing a lot of the 002 presets which, frankly, aren't that great, plus many users seem to go for 'glassy' digital sounds which are just one side of its character. It can do traditional analog as well, and with a vengeance: the 24dB/Oct ladder filter can be very Moog-like. So its character isn't easy to define since it's capable of a wide range of sounds.
As an example of something that's perhaps not typical of the sort of 002 sounds you might find in online demos, here's a Bowed Strings patch I posted a while back:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4s3pmqynxo11qh4/002%20Bowed%20Strings.aif?dl=0 This is a combination of a sawtooth and one of the digital waves, and it uses the (very unique sounding) drive to get the bowed attack.
I can't comment on the 008; when it came out I found its sound way too aggressive for my liking and decided to pass.