i own a mexi fender strat. and its awesome i really enjoy it, but when ever i play it with any other amps around or try to use it in practice with my band when its distorted whenever i arent actually playing a not it gives off the most horrendous high pitched feedback type of noise. it also loses a bit of its sound when distorted. is there anything i can do to combat this? or should i stop posting and go fiddle with some knobs and figure out the problem

If you need really high gain then you may do well to put a noisegate inbetween the guitar and your first pedal. Diamond Darrell used to do that.

_________________
No no and no