Tubes aren't only a means of clipping a signal; they also provide their own color. More specifically, they are well-known for increasing even-order harmonics. This is why tubes are often characterized as imparting a "warm" or "thick" tone. As your comment rightly intimates, this effect becomes particularly dramatic when a tube is saturated and begins to clip, producing distortion. But it exists before that point as well: it's just a lot more subtle. That is to say, it's not as obvious an effect turning on a fuzz or flanger, nor is it meant to be, but it is still easy to hear the change when I remove or add a tube preamp like the Arkham Oracle, Noble, or Jule Simon to my signal chain.
In short, tubes--even clean tubes--change the timbre of one's signal. Whether or not that is "appealing" is something only you can answer. If you are looking for an edge-of-breakup tone or actual tube distortion, the Noble is not what you want; but if you want to add some color to your clean signal (especially useful if you are ampless) the Noble is one of many ways you can do that. Another way would be to use a tube DI like the Khan or REDDI. Those are all about producing clean, tube tones and are very popular with folks playing direct. You can read all about those--and I recommend you do since the parallels are significant--in the big preamp and DI thread on TalkBass. You can even hear a bunch of audio samples, though those aren't always helpful since it's not possible to capture all the tones a preamp with an EQ can produce.
For what it's worth: the Noble wasn't for me--the sound wasn't tight enough for my ears--but I am a big fan of the Jule Simone tube preamp (which, as it happens, is designed to have its tubes overdriven, though I don't use it that way).
Correct. It doesn't have a cab sim because it was designed over a decade ago and the product is in such demand that its builder is too busy fulfilling orders to redesign it lol. But most preamps don't offer cab sims anyway. Gear like the Shift Line Olympic MKIIIS and Origin Effects BassRigs are not representative of most preamp pedals. After all, a preamp pedal primarily aims to recreate the preamp (tone-shaping and level-raising) section of an amp head, not the EQ curve of any particular cabinet.
You seem to think a preamp pedal that only offers clean tones is limited, but I think that perspective fails to account for the difference between a preamp and a preamp pedal. The latter is designed for modern performance where most bassists aren't generating their dirt from an overdriven amp so much as a chain of pedals which likely includes a sampling of overdrive, distortion, and fuzz. Of course, even pedals are a bit outdated with all the modeling software out there now. But I still prefer to use them from an interactive and performative standpoint.
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