Sandspur fuzz - no sound, led and bypass work

[Jedijedd]

Hello all,
This is my first post here, and probably like many new members, I have a troubleshooting question as my first post. I put together a Sandspur fuzz and have been getting no sound from the pedal. I get signal in bypass and the led works but nothing from the pedal itself. Interestingly enough, it produced sound on my first try, but the led was very weak and so was the sound. I’m not sure if there is a grounding issue or something is wired wrong.

Some of the troubleshooting things I have tried:
- tested all the values of caps and transistors which seem fine.
- tested the sweep and value of the pots which seem fine.
- tested the input jacks and footswitch
- tried different transistors with no change
- checked that I haven’t switched the input and output cables
- checked for grounding issues such as cold solder joints, bad solder joints, or bridges (I know some of this is not the prettiest but I’ve done the tug test and continuity test, however I could be testing these things wrong?)
-I replaced C3 with a new cap, as I wasn’t getting a reading but nothing has changed
- checked for any grounding issues such as metal touching the enclosure or foot switch

Things I haven’t tried or been able to figure out:
- getting correct measurements from the diode (I get a reading one way but not the other) or the electro caps. I haven’t removed them yet to get correct readings. I get values but they seem all over the place
- I haven’t been able to bias the transistors yet

I also wasn’t sure about my power supply. I have two wall warts that are center negative but one says ac/dc adaptor while the other says simply “dc”. I grabbed one thinking it was the dc one and wasn’t sure if I fried anything.

Anyway, I have been trying to get this to work for a few weeks, while also taking my time with it. This is my second pedal I’ve built, and the other one had the wrong value cap keeping it from working. I’m sure I am missing something simple here and hoped that another set (or sets) of eyes could help.

Thanks for looking and reading!

 

[Jedijedd]

Hard to really tell but from your photos it really looks like your power jack is wired backwards.. have you confirmed your getting positive voltage and not negative 9v?

I'll hook it up today and let you know. I have the positive wire going to the long leg on the jack. I'll see if I can get a better shot of the jack. Thanks!

 

[swelchy]

I'll hook it up today and let you know. I have the positive wire going to the long leg on the jack. I'll see if I can get a better shot of the jack. Thanks!

the long leg of jack is where the positive hookup goes.... but it would nt hurt to verify with multimeter... I make it a habit to spin the jack so the leg aligns with the left side of pcb.. positive on left and negative on right that way the pcb and jack are in alignment. and my wires go straight to them without having to cross and get messy

 

[Jedijedd]

the long leg of jack is where the positive hookup goes.... but it would nt hurt to verify with multimeter... I make it a habit to spin the jack so the leg aligns with the left side of pcb.. positive on left and negative on right that way the pcb and jack are in alignment. and my wires go straight to them without having to cross and get messy

That totally makes sense, thanks. I’ll test it today and see what comes up. I really didn’t like working with the cloth pushback wire. It’s had to see if things look okay after soldering, so I might change some of the wire with more conventional wire.