Dream fuzz / Op-amp muff low gain

Zamboni

New member
I've built about 15 pedals so far with pretty minimal troubleshooting issues but this Dream Fuzz has me stumped. Audio passes through fine in bypass and when the effect is engaged the pots behave as expected except the gain is much lower than it should be, at highest gain setting it has a little crunch.

I've gone through and checked values on all the components and don't see any issues there. No leads crossed / loose wire strand either, in case the pics don't show that. I swapped both ICs with spares and that didn't help.
Using an audio probe there's a good amount of gain coming out of the first IC (JRC4558) but then after C6 / R5 the signal is pretty much back to clean, so I'd imagine the issue is related to that but I'm not sure what to try next.

I checked voltages on both ICs:

IC1 - JRC4558
Pin 1 4.3
Pin 2 4.3
Pin 3 4.23
Pin 4 0
Pin 5 4.26
Pin 6 4.29
Pin 7 4.29
Pin 8 8.6

IC2 - UA741CP
Pin 1 0
Pin 2 4.7
Pin 3 4.45
Pin 4 0
Pin 5 0
Pin 6 4.7
Pin 7 8.6
Pin 8 0

Any ideas are much appreciated.
 

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Thanks for the help so far. Gave the board a good scrubbing and got rid of any flux and it’s behaving the same way. One more potential clue, at max vol/gain overall crunchy tone the level is below unity / bypass signal volume.
 
i'm having the opposite issue, i get a loud squeal with mine, self oscillating high pitch squeal. turning it on obviously amplifies it, took the thing apart, replaced the 4558 with a fresh one, changed all the electrolytics, checked other points, replaced the diodes, etc etc. works fine for a little bit, had it on the bench , tested it multiple times, sounded amazing! finally put it back on the board and boom(tested it with multiple power supplies), once again it decided it wanted to squeal again. something in the circuit is screwing something up and i'm at my wits end, even contemplated buying an actual op amp muff.
 
i'm having the opposite issue, i get a loud squeal with mine, self oscillating high pitch squeal. turning it on obviously amplifies it, took the thing apart, replaced the 4558 with a fresh one, changed all the electrolytics, checked other points, replaced the diodes, etc etc. works fine for a little bit, had it on the bench , tested it multiple times, sounded amazing! finally put it back on the board and boom(tested it with multiple power supplies), once again it decided it wanted to squeal again. something in the circuit is screwing something up and i'm at my wits end, even contemplated buying an actual op amp muff.
I’m kind of ready to give up as well, this weekend went over entire path with an audio probe and can’t really tell why the gain lowers after IC1 and red lower anything that looked remotely cold or suspect with no change.
 
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