I know you already went for Zebra2, But Alchemy is still worth checking out
It's just soooo awesome!

I feel you!
I recommend you check out some 3rd party plugins. I demoed and love both DMGaudio EQuality and Fabfilter Pro-Q for their transparency and easy handling. I recently purchased EQuality and I use it a lot myself. EQ8 colors the sound too much in my opinion and I sometimes get the feeling ...

Of course: If it sounds good it is good! But sometimes it just doesn't sound good, but you still like the feel of the kick. Tuning it can make it fit with the rest of your song!
How I normally fix it is by just transposing the kick (I use Ableton Live) 2 or 3 octaves up so it becomes more an ...