I've noticed that several of the 3.0 presets come with the noise gate ON. I don't really understand the noise gate thing or why I need it. When the noise gate is ON the pick response is terrible and it seems like I need to pick medium hard to hear anything and if I then pick harder it comes on so loud it really hurts my ears. It seems to do nothing useful... I play blues mostly and not really super high gain. Do I really need the Noise Gate and if so how can I set it so the pick response is normal and not two states VERY LOW, then TOO LOUD. Thanks for the help!

From your description, it sounds like you have a very low signal level coming into your computer, and are then compensating by turning up the output very high. This would cause a problem triggering the noise gate, and possibly you are hearing the noise gate at the 'floor' level until it triggers, then you hear a very loud signal.

Make sure you have a reasonable level coming into your audio interface and into S-Gear. At least into the yellow when you hit a chord hard. You should then find that the noise gate works well with the factory presets.

Thank you very much! I will change my setup per your suggestion and try the presets again. That's probably the problem I'm having because I do a lot of playing late at night and volume is pretty low.