+1 on less distortion/gain and actually using the guitar's volume knob

It's amazing how articulate and expressive a patch becomes when you don't drown it in distortion.
I'd tell your friend to download PodFarm and have a go with it. There's tons of preset tones, and some of them are pretty good. Most of the time the patches I use are factory presets that I've tweaked in one way or another to customize them to my style of playing/my guitar's pickups, etc.
Part of the joy of playing guitar on the computer is that there's so many tone options available. Half the fun is twisting all the knobs and trying all the amps to see what they sound like. Kinda like being alone in a Guitar Center after closing time
