First, update Zaptel. Trixbox ships with stale Zaptel drivers that often do not support newer hardware or include the latest improvements in echo cancellation. It's a pain, in part because Trixbox doesn't come with kernel headers, either. And then there's the chronic spinlock.h problem that Trixbox hasn't fixed in release after release... have you tried
AsteriskNOW.org? It's genuine Asterisk, distributed by Digium.
To eliminate the echo, check the following helpful knowledgebase articles:
http://kb.digium.com/entry/19/1/
http://kb.digium.com/entry/19/134/
With the suggestions in these articles, you should be able to put your gain settings back to normal and resolve echo trouble.
Hope this helps,
rm