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On the left side, where I assume the ground from the jack comes in - that piece of copper gets turned into a bit of an island on the back side. Think of the traces like walls of a maze -- the current has to move along the path the maze makes to get wherever they're going. Sometimes you can...

Looking at the schematic, this looks totally normal. It looks like it's not really meant to be switched as a live control. The main issue is that when you switch VCC from 9V to 18V, all of the caps in the circuit are charged assuming 9V. Two major places - the VREF cap is charged to 4.5V to...

Looks better! The ground plane is much less chopped up now. ... probably? The 1N5817 is usually a DO-41 package (not the smaller DO-35) and the datasheet claims ø 0.71mm legs. You might want ø 1mm hole size for easier insertion - it's not a huge deal since you're doing it by hand (and not...

Looks pretty decent! Some feedback, all pretty minor, just best-practice stuff: Mechanical You might want to add 'Orthogonal Dimensions' on one of your user graphics layers to measure the dimensions between things, to make drilling your enclosures easier (more important when fitting to an...

I think the thing about sig/gnd/sig/sig is that the bottom copper signal is quite far away from solid copper, so you're back to thinking about return currents on those traces and placing a bunch of vias where it jumps a trace on in.2 (And you're also back to having to think about coupling...

So for resistors and caps and stuff, that's all in the base KiCad footprint libraries -- the trouble is finding them. Like if you want a standard-ass 1/4W resistor it's called something like "R_Axial_DIN0207_L6.3mm_D2.5mm_P7.62mm_Horizontal". Axial = leads come out of opposite ends (Radial is...

I tried the keystone spring thing for a while but could never get good contact. Even without powdercoat overspray, aluminum forms a thin layer of nonconductive oxide very quickly and sanding/scraping/brass brushing the inside of the enclosure just leaves a sometimes-conductive mess of shavings...

FWIW - the shipping times were very fast - like within 3-4 days. Just be careful of those import fees!

I do have to chime in with an LCSC horror story -- at least for folks in the USA. I learned (the very hard way) that after the third line item, UPS charges $3-5 **PER LINE ITEM ON THE INVOICE** for some kind of bullshit 'paperwork fee'. So I ordered ~$200 in parts from LCSC and got soaked for...

Can you measure the VREF voltage when it fades in/out? (Maybe at pin 6 of IC1?) Probably best to measure against the DC jack sleeve since your GND might be doing weird things. When you say that it fades out - does it fade out when you bypass it? Or when you turn it off? Does changing the...

Doublecheck your footswitch wiring. When there's a bypass related problem it's the footswitch 99.99% of the time. (Because at that point the signal isn't even going thru the effect) My guess is that it's wired in a way that ground is only connected to your board when the footswitch is...

Aw snap, thanks so much for the feedback! I'm super jazzed that it works and that it sounds like the original - I had nothing to compare it to other than the schematic, so I'm totally thrilled that my hack-ass translation job worked. I like your face/bottom plates. Do you laser print those at...

Yeah - that, too. More importantly, it has a buried ground pad which means you can't solder this with an iron. You can kind-of-do-it with hot air though it means getting the component above its comfortable temperature (probably) since you have to get the component hot enough to melt solder...

I can take a crack. Is it good? Not yet (sorry but that's ok), and apologies if I sound a bit harsh: First, it's really hard to give you a good review here. It's a low-DPI image and you have all of the fab text visible which makes it very messy and hard to read. Generally it's good to take...

FWIW I've been using Claude a lot in my building, but as a validator and not a builder. "I" even built a thing to auto-generate a spice model from my schematics and run simulations. Building checks to make sure I haven't reversed an op-amp or potentiometer, that I haven't accidentally paralleled...

One option is to use a faceplate - it depends on what kind of tools and materials you have access to. Personally I do this by ordering PCBs with holes cutout and silkscreened labels. But other people do it with thin acrylic or thin wood using woodburning or lasercutting. I suppose it's probably...

Bummer that my suggestions didn't fix it. Another probably really easy thing to try in terms of ruling things out -- what happens if you power it with a 9V battery (or depending on the state of your workbench, a fancy lab supply?) That can help narrow down whether or not you're fighting...

What happens if you bodge a 47 or 100pF cap across pins 1 and 2 of the gain pot? (Also the gain pot is right by the charge pump, maybe picking up some noise there). Ideally you want your decoupling near the op-amp. You could try bodging a 100nF cap between pins 4 and 8 (+ and - rails) of IC2...

See if you can give the PCB a bodge first w/ those changes and see how it works, before you spend an hour recreating it on a breadboard. The breadboard might even work fine because it's a breadboard and has built-in capacitors. ;-) If you saw a bunch of loss across R100, it's kind of...

Sorry - does it make noise on your breadboard as well? One potential source might be oscillation at really high frequency (inaudible, supersonic) in the gain stage, which then pulls a bunch of current and amplifies ground hum. That'd track back into the first stage, too, (to C5) since the whole...