mmmm ... vst for lead's ... i used to use Junglist, DSP Discovery & pro53 as my main leads in most of my tracks, i think you could get good results with most of vst's, distortion can add some punch, depends on the sound ...
i know exeactly what you mean, thats the reason i drooped all vst's and moved to hardware synth's but that dosent mean that you cant do anything with vst's, alot of industrial tracks ( in trance scene ) use vst these days and get exellent results, some vst's are better then others ... it took me a year to get a good bassline with steinberg's VB ... but at the end i think you can do anything with vst's, i just dont like them much ...
anyway, check out these 2, they might be old, i dident work with vst for some time now ...
http://www.kvraudio.com/get.php?mode=show&id=155 - i think they tried to emulate nord lead here ...
http://www.kvraudio.com/get/421.html
surf alittle here :
http://www.kvraudio.com/ - you can get alot of good info and samples of what you looking for.
