The advantage of the Metal LiveWires is that it has been voiced for heavy tones in a way that other active pickups have not. The distortion channel of your amp or a distortion box should not cause the actual output level of an active pickup to drop. More likely, the Metal LiveWires' output is too high for the high gain distortion box or the high gain channel of the amplifier and is causing saturation to occur at very low settings of each device. We recommend running gain settings lower and increasing volume settings. Keep in mind that with the Metal LiveWires, it will not be necessary to use nearly as much gain on your amplifier and it may be totally unnecessary to use a distortion box. If the distortion box is an essential part of your sound, then you can either attenuate the level of the Metal LiveWires with a voltage divider or turn your guitar volume down.