Wow - I know, old thread but I'm so glad I finally found someone else to confirm this high start issue. I've had 2 of these POS' sitting in a box and always wondered if I was doing something wrong. I tried every adjustment/setting many times and nothing helped. If you do a bench test you can see that the 1st throttle step is like 20 to 30%. It was a problem just putting my little mono in my pool and flat out unusable in my rescue boat. And both were advertised as Ver 2...

I finally swapped both out with the HobbyWing/Turnigy Car 35 ESC's. What a difference having full low speed control!!!. Just be careful since they're not water resistant.