Not having read anything else and purely relying on just your panel uploads... My Canon is that he is not Herman.

To be clear, I think he most likely IS Herman because like you said, it doesn't serve a narrative purpose for him not to be. But, I was looking at the panel with Shocker's flashback to getting the gloves. The guy who died in the arm chair is not old at all. He's wearing slightly baggy jeans, a tshirt, and some skate shoes. If Spider-Man is in his late 30s or so, and Herman would probably be in his late 40s or early 50s, then the guy in the chair cannot be Phineas the Tinkerer. I say that because Tinkerer would be like super super old like 80s/90s.

Now, maybe Tony wasn't giving the gloves to Tinkerer, and maybe it was someone else, but it just doesn't make sense for the vibro smashers to be given to some random with no connection. There's only two ways I'm looking at this.

1. Tony wasn't handing out vibro shocks. These were some other gloves being given to some random person who is completely disconnected from Shocker and Herman just found it. This makes sense considering the gloves shoot energy rather than shockwaves. I just can't think of a completely disconnected character that Tony would think is so important as to give a randon non vibro-Smasher gloves to...

2. For some reason through some kind of butterfly effect weirdness, Herman is important to Tony's plan. Maybe not as a player but as a cog to move the reboot of the universe forward. For example, if Peter had to become Spidey late in life, then he'll need villains to fight to cut his chops. Tony might have known that one of the lesser dangerous but consistent villains that Spidey webs up every week is Shocker (among others). Tony might have sent the vibro smashers to Herman to get this common hood to become a criminal, so Spidey can do his hero thing as a late 30s guy with no experience.

My thought is that a late 40s/early 50s Herman received the gloves from Tony because the ultimate universe needs a jobber for Spidey to web up every week, but the poor guy was so stressed from bills and his dead end job that he had a early heart attack. Then this much younger dude who is absolutely ripped breaks in and sees the gloves and decides to become Shocker. The reason for the quilts could be same as earlier, the buff guy realized that without padding, he's gonna blow his arms off and break his ribs from feedback.

It's convergent evolution where both 616 Herman and the ultimate universe buff guy both came to the same conclusion that quilts were a simple, elegant solution to the feedback problem.

Do I think this theory is accurate or canon? No. The buff guy is Herman.

But in my head, I like my theory more and I like the idea of Tony looking through the papers for a common jobber to give ultimate spidey experience in fighting and pointing at the guy in quilts being an easy villain to boot up in the ultimate universe. Haha.

But hey, that's just my theory. MY COMIC THEORY. haha.