War Scythe - incredibly noisy

[airbud]

Hey all, just finished putting together a War Scythe build with the cleft mod. I used a 2N1306 for Q2 (the AC176) as that was the only NPN germanium I had (this could be the problem, but I can't compare). I originally tried the 2N5089s for Q4 and Q5 as per the mod, and that was noisy. Switched to 2N1308s, still noisy.

It is INCREDIBLY noisy, even for what appears to be an insanely gain-y pedal. To be usable I turned the gain basically all the way down on both channels. Each channel works fine on its own, but once both are engaged, it turns into a jet engine (octave makes it worse). I also tried 2N3906s instead of the 2N5089s for Q3 and Q6, but still super noisy. Slightly different texture to each, but the sound remains the same.

I used a A100k instead of an A1M as I saw that recommended somewhere on the forum; let me know if that's an easy culprit.

Attached some pics, I might just be an idiot and this is just a super loud pedal.

 

[airbud]

Could it be the socketed transistors maybe? I was cheap and didn't buy the to18 sockets, so i used individual single socket headers instead; i can see that being less than ideal for noise.

after going back and playing my Life build, i'm starting to think these are just ultra gain noisy pedals. which is fine, i just want to make sure i didn't do anything wrong.

 

[airbud]

marking this as solved because I think I generally underappreciate that pedals aren't generally completely dimed out, and a mega gain double pedal set to 10 is going to amplify some noise.

usually I start from all knobs at 10 when I'm testing but I think it's time to come up with a better QA protocol. this worked fine for modulation, reverb, delay and basic dirt boxes, but I think I need to be more thoughtful and actually plan the testing process.