My way of making distorted sound (with pod XT live) is this:

First get a nice loud clean sound (get it nice with a modeled small tweed amp, cranked up) after that, get a ditortion pedal on (prefer the ones with mid range contolable level, I happen to love Dimebag's distorted sound and has a lot of midrange frequence that helps to achive a nasty gha gha gha when you hit palm muted strings).

And after al that, get the leveles right with EQ, (more control over the allready distorted sound), maybe add a reverb or little chorus (not much, like my noise kinda dry).

Does anybody has a different way, (or a better one), or a suggestion over cleaner definition cause my guitar (7 string shecter guitar) tends to get kind of undefined sound.