how do i get more output from a bad monkey?

[maertz13]

Humbuckers. Hot nasty in your face humbuckers. As previously suggested, you might go with a 500k or 1M pot. Is use a 1M and maybe put a 1M resistor across the lugs. Then you can remove the resistor if you need to.

louder pickups don't make the output volume higher . but yeah, maybe a bigger pot. though every build doc says 100k

 

[Ale_jellybelly]

i had an original (sold it for $$$ during the height of the craze ) and unity volume was around 2/3 oclock depending on low gain, and at 12 on higher gain settings, if I remember correctly

 

[music6000]

full disclosure, this is regarding a pcbguitarmania PCB, however, in all possible places I have changed the values of components to match the pedalpcb schematic. with the small exception of C3, which is currently a film cap. the PCBGM schematic had a 470n film there. i've already changed the volume pot to linear taper, and still, i've got to turn it almost all the way up to get to max gain. the bias on Q1 is about 4.2. i have already corrected the issue where they had Q2 the wrong way around. it SOUNDS good, it's just too quiet.

any idea how to get more clean gain out of this circuit? volume at max shouldn't be unity gain.

So you change all the values to the ones in Red:
It would be Handy if you showed a picture of your current PCB build.