First off, it's actually hard to not get good tone out of a V-series Ampeg. So there's something wrong. With all of the tone controls set to the 12 o'clock position, there is no boost or cut effect, so the sound you get should be exactly what your guitar delivers to the input, only loud! Tweak from there.

But if it buzzes, or rattles, or gives unprovoked feedback, it is not healthy. The reverb tank has long springs in it that can make a horrible crashing sound if the amp gets bumped hard, but that shouldn't happen unless it gets bumped hard. The whole chassis is shock-mounted on rubber supports - that's why the control panel can move. The intent was to reduce shock damage to the tubes when the amp is carted around from gig to gig. There are limits to anything. The amp should have been shipped to you with the tubes removed and carefully packed separately.

A healthy VT-22 should have lots of clean headroom, smoothly breaking into rich distortion that 10 out of 10 people recognize as sounding right. I have to conclude that your amp has some failed components.

Swap some e-mails with Bob at Eurotubes, and look around for a good amp tech who knows old Ampegs. Marshall fanatics don't understand. Fender-heads have a better feel for what a strong clean amp should sound like, but a tech who loves Ampegs can get the best out of it for you.

I suspect there's a problem with the reverb driver tube, and/or the Phase Inverter that drives the power section. The bias supply for the power tubes should also be modified to make it adjustable. The factory setup was adjusted by physically removing and installing resistors of different values to get the right voltage. A good multi-turn trimpot will not shift from vibration, and makes re-biasing much easier.

While you're looking for a tech, you can do some investigation yourself, but be careful. Any tube amp has lethal voltages in it. Ampegs have some particularly high plate voltages. Your power tubes are probably OK, but I think the preamp has some problems that are feeding bad signal to the power stage. Get a plastic chopstick, or piece of wooden dowel about a foot long, and gently tap the bottles of the tubes. All tubes are slightly microphonic, but a problem tube will scream when you tap it. If you have any spare tubes, you can swap them out one at a time to see if the problem is caused by an individual tube, or if it remains unchanged with different tube(s) installed.

Don't be discouraged. That is a tone-monster amp, with enough power to rearrange your neighbor's furniture when its healthy. Get it put right, and you will probably never again be willing settle for anything less.