Something's amiss here by the sound of it.
The factory rigs just aren't that bad. Sure, relative to some commercial and RE profiles many of them may be inferior, but that's only in comparison with "total awesomeness". There's plenty of variety in the factory set so the fact that you were hearing Boss Metal Zone-style character in all the high-gain rigs screams to me that something is wrong.
Trust me, even the "bad" rigs in the factory set are a step up in playability and tonal variation (in terms of the Rigs on offer) from the typical modellers out there.
I'd definitely start with a full reset and reloading of the factories from the System menu.