I use a equalizer (less bass, more mids) infront of the preamp in order to get a tighter distortion. I currently use an MXR 10 band equ, a Kerry King signature.

Unfortunately I still get this hiss for some reason, It seems that as soon as I put something ifront of the distortion that alters the signal it will make it noisy when not not playing, a simple gate won't solve this, when muting the strings you still hear the noise for about 1 second before it dies down (gets gated), is there any piece of gear that can solve this?

Thanks alot