I like your story better, theres also some rumours online about a band called Keel having a Jose modded amp and sending that to Peavey as the basis for the VTM.
Hard to know for sure but there’s more than a small bit of Jose/Marshall influence on the circuit.
Joe Barresi seems to be a big fan, he posts it a lot and I’m pretty sure it may have made some Tool recordings (they mention some old Peavey head),
Cool website here showing what each of the dipswitches do:
https://www.ampbooks.com/mobile/classic-circuits/peavey/
