Rings is a great option - I came from a guitar background too and really like it for those sorts of tones - plucky is pretty easy to dial in and the red or orange/red mode (not available in vcv rack iirc) on polyphony gives a nice stereo ish spread - alternating notes left and right
using other sound sources as input works really well too - drones etc are available
I very rarely send mine through a filter or vca though - mostly just through a delay - mostly clouds or magneto or disting and then at the moment I'm sending everything through an fx aid xl on the lo-fi algorithm
so you may find you don't need one - or maybe you do, but stereo - blades perhaps or qpas
if you are enjoying vcv rack something like an es8 or es9 can be a great link between the vcv rack and the modular
"some of the best base-level info to remember can be found in Jim's sigfile" @Lugia
Utility modules are the dull polish that makes the shiny modules actually shine!!!
sound sources < sound modifiers < modulation sources < utilities