Kev999
I recommend this one:
http://www.cakewalk.com/P...K-S-Type-Expander-Gate

You can't buy it right now but hopefully the store will be open for business soon.

I thought Sonar Platinum had all available pro channel modules, I was unaware of these extras. Some of them look very good!

http://www.cakewalk.com/P...ory/ProChannel-Modules

Waves C1 gate is fantastic and can likely get it cheap! that said, manual trimming is often the best way and like chuckybaby said, its part of our job.  pro engineers get their assistants to do it 

Remove silence is broken but I forgot why but I stopped using it years ago.   Some of the parameters don;t do what they are supposed to do and fine tuning it becomes impossible because of the problems.   Search the forum and Im sure the specific issues are noted somewhere

The mute tool might serve you well here also.

The easiest thing I've found for this is REAFIR . One of the free plugins offered by Reaper.fm . I think it's in the section ReaPlugs. Kenny Goya has tutorials for using it , I use it a lot for removing Hum produced by my Takamine. Removing the hiss on a kick track shouldn't effect the quality of the drum at all ..

Lanceindastudio
The mute tool might serve you well here also.

I totally use the mute tool too. I just zip through splitting the track around the parts I want to keep. If most of them have equivalent fades you can do the fades all at once by selecting all the clips and holding ctrl.