Hi,

  High gain will reveal much about a guitar's pickup quality. We have a cheap Squire Strat here that has a very microphonic bridge position humbucker... when you play that guitar through an extremely high gain amp, we get microphonic "squealing" feedback. The real solution for that guitar is to get the humbucker "wax potted" by a guitar tech, or ultimately to put in a better pickup that has been wax potted at the factory.

  We have another test guitar that has better humbuckers and through the exact same high gain patch, there's no microphonic squealing, but you can sense that musical feedback could occur if you let a note sustain for a while.

  It's hard to say if that's the same case with your particular guitar, but I've been around enough guitars with microphonic pickups to know that it's a strong possiblity. Especially if it's a less expensive guitar (that's usually where the guitar company cuts the cost so the guitar is less expensive: in the quality of the electronics, the wiring job and noise shielding, along with substituting the wood with cheaper materials).

  So if you cannot or don't want to change your guitar components, the only advice I can offer is to lower the Drive setting on the POD. But most likely, the tone quality won't be what you're after, so you'll probably need to look into the pickups.

  A good test to see if you pickup(s) are microphonic would be to put the guitar through a high gain sound on the amp, roll the volume up on the guitar and just tap the body of the guitar. If you hear that metallic/squealing "ping" happen easily, the pickup is microphonic. (Tubes on tube amps can get microhponic, too by the way). If you find this to be true, you might want to consider upgrading your guitar's pickups, honestly.

  Hope this info helps you out.

  Regards,

  L6Perry

  P.S. Here's a Forum Thread I found that talks about microphonic pickups: http://www.jsguitarforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=90874