how to work around tones in ableton live lite 12

[hoary silo]

i recently got a scarlet 2i2 4th gen. it came with ableton live 12 lite, how do i actually use it just for tone sculpting and recordinng. also i have a zoom g1x four which i can record directly by passing it through the scarlett into my laptop. however the distortion tones come with extreme noise and no high mid low balance. so how do i just use ableton and get good tones and how do i get free plugins?

[trail flower]

first of all... ableton lite will probably give you grief in the long run with it's limitation

any other daw like Reaper or Waveform will probably be better

also : forget the zoom, it's a piece of shit and recording the wet tone from it will make you loose the ability to process your playing further down the line

for free ampsims, there's a LOT nowadays like Amplitube CS, Guitarrig Player and Amplocker that will give you tons of options