SOLVED El Sol - crazy noise!

[muffinscruffin]

Hi all,

Like a lot of us I'm trying the El Sol for my first build. Like a LOT of us on the internet, I ran into a couple crazy noise issues, and I haven't really found them actually resolved anywhere on the internet. I'm also hoping to clean this up a lot because I'm hoping to build another for my friend's birthday next month!

I breadboard'd it, following the tutorial, and got crazy screeching noise out of my headphone amp, but the EL Sol sound nonetheless.
I figured it would work better on the PCB, so I tried soldering that up last night. Now I have the same exact symptoms...slow and weak signal, crazy feedback of noise and screeching.
I'm hoping when I put it in the aluminum enclosure it will fix the frequency interference but it seems like there are other issues at play here, and I don't want to start mounting if I still have soldering to do.

The issues:
-Sound doesn't come on immediately...seems like it has to "warm up" to start passing signal
-Huge noise floor when ON, with minimal guitar signal. I can hear the fuzz effect through the screen of noise at low levels
-Bypass seems weak and a little hissy too
-LED didn't come on
-When I plug a battery into my power jack (I have an adapter from my 1-spot power bank), I get reversed polarities at the jack??and can only get bypass signal
-The guitar's signal is so LOUD; by that I mean the sound of my single coils' background noise. There's obviously a ton of signal going through but not a lot of my sound.

I've tried:
-Changing power supplies: using a battery made it only pass sound in Bypass-maybe it's dead. Using my 1-spot grounded power supply helped the noise issue a lot, but didn't fix it
-Checking continuities from footswitch/board, and of grounds; I think I have it where I should, don't have it where I shouldn't. I do think this could be a problem area, those 3PDT switches are a doozy for a first-time solderer
-Different LM386N-4s, JRC386Ds; the Ds helped a little, now I'm using both, per recommendation I saw on this forum
-Cut LED off the board for now, ordered 3mms as opposed to 5mms? Seems like my 5 should have worked, Tayda didn't give me many options.
-Checking voltages/continuities of ICs...I'm getting 9.11V from pins 2->6 and ~8V from 3->6 (am I doing it right?)
-Ohming out the capacitors; Not really sure what I'm trying for here either, but 2 of my 10uf have wildly different values, and C3+C4 are showing no resistance at all. Is that normal for this circuit?

My 2 cents:
It's my first time soldering up a board and might have made some goofs. I don't see any burs or strands, but I also don't really have a fine tuned sense.
My Input and Output jacks seem to have some of my best solder work.
I can see I nicked a cap with my iron in one of the photos, that 10uf has the different value from the other.
I also hit the polyester film cap it looks like. I'm going to change the nicked 10uf. Should I change the film while I'm at it?

I'm also hoping I sourced the right parts. As a first-timer, I had a lot of questions and couldn't pull all my answers from Google.
I got almost everything from Tayda, the JRCs from Small Bear, and the LM386N-4s+sockets & silicon shielded/stranded 24awg from Amazon.

Are any of these components likely culprits for my noise problem? Does anyone have any fixes that haven't been shared yet?

 

[muffinscruffin]

Thanks for the help you all. Got it all re-soldered correctly and the thing CRANKS! Bypass mode works well too.

I burnt (barely) the casing of another 10uf in the process though. How sensitive are the electrolytic caps to heat? It seems to still be sounding good, until I get over 80% on the pot. Then the background "beeeeep bwoops" come in. It is all still exposed on the floothough, and was ,making on/off connections with my pedalboard's metal.

Thanks for all the tips too. This being my first project, I knew what to do, technically, but kept being sloppy bout my wiping/tinning, and was working with a handicap with my tools.
This iron is a 25W and the chisel tip is old and scrappy. I had it lying around and was thinking about getting another tip for it, but I'm thinking I should get a whole new kit. 25W is supposed to be able to get up to 900F I think, but my iron is definitely making it harder than it needs to be.

 

[Laundryroom David]

Thanks for the help you all. Got it all re-soldered correctly and the thing CRANKS! Bypass mode works well too.

I burnt (barely) the casing of another 10uf in the process though. How sensitive are the electrolytic caps to heat? It seems to still be sounding good, until I get over 80% on the pot. Then the background "beeeeep bwoops" come in. It is all still exposed on the floothough, and was ,making on/off connections with my pedalboard's metal.

Thanks for all the tips too. This being my first project, I knew what to do, technically, but kept being sloppy bout my wiping/tinning, and was working with a handicap with my tools.
This iron is a 25W and the chisel tip is old and scrappy. I had it lying around and was thinking about getting another tip for it, but I'm thinking I should get a whole new kit. 25W is supposed to be able to get up to 900F I think, but my iron is definitely making it harder than it needs to be.

Reading back through old threads. Not sure if you've picked up a new soldering iron/station yet. If not, then I'd really encourage you to go higher than 25w - it's not just about the temperature it can achieve, but also about the temperature it can maintain while you're working and cleaning and re-tinning. In my experience. A more consistent iron temp (with a clean tip) is going to translate into more consistent solder joints. I have also learned that you CAN have too much heat for the job lol. Ask me how