As the founder of Seven Brothers and a guy who has been building and using small scale vacuum stills commercially for a decade, I agree that it is just different. Vacuum stills will allow you to manipulate variables to achieve different results. That has always been my goal, not to make a vodka just like the big guys make, but to make products that stand out as different from the herd. Ultimately, the consumer decides if they are better or worse than products made in conventional stills!
As far as running a vacuum still goes, they can be temperamental and they are not always as efficient as conventional stills. Mine are set up to sample without breaking vacuum, but making correct cuts is more challenging because the boiling point of each component changes under vacuum and you don't have traditional temperature benchmarks to rely on. It's not the easy way to make spirits.
Southernhighlander, I have some experience imploding non-vacuum-rated vessels. It's relatively easy to convert a large, shiny, expensive still into a crumpled mass. I wouldn't pull even a modest vacuum on any vessel that is not engineered for it (again).