ZVex Woolly Mammoth problems

[sanderrdam]

Hi everyone,

I’m working on my third pedal: the ZVex Woolly Mammoth. I’m building all my pedals in wooden enclosures, just because it’s fun and it works fast. My previous Super Hard On and Muff Fuzz pedals work perfectly.
I’m building this Woolly Mammoth according to this layout:

http://goo.gl/PKXhTw

The pedal didn’t work when I finished building it, so I immediately searched for answers in the huge amount of debug topics. But since I’m still completely new to soldering, electronics and measuring stuff with a multimeter, it’s kind of hard to find out where to start or what I’m doing wrong.
Problem: when I plug in, I just hear a clean bypass sound. The volume pot works, I think the eq pot works, but the pinch and wool pots don’t work. When I unplug the 9volt battery nothing changes. The sound stays the same.

What have I tried so far: I’ve triple checked if I’ve used the right components and wiring, and I’ve checked all the solder points, cuts and tracks.
Everything looks fine to me. I picked up my multimeter and put the black probe on the ring (ground) of the input (9volt) and the red probe and the back of the print to check all solder points. Everything is +- 9 volt, except for the input wire (0 volt!) which is connected with the tip of the input.

I hope someone is willing to help me with this or point me in the right direction.

(In a lot of debug topics they ask you to measure the transitors on the C B and E. I tried to do that but the values are continuously changing between 0 and 2000. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong here.)

Thanks!

[motterpaul]

It's hard to say from the pictures. I don't see anything immediately wrong.

Your method for testing your circuit sounds a little different, though. Not everything in your circuit will be tied to ground - so what you did does not tell you much - the trick is to make sure the right components are connected to one another, and that none that shouldn't be connected are wrongly connected.

Some of your soldering looks pretty thick and possibly over-soldered. I suggest you find a "continuity" tester on your meter and start looking on your solder side for anything that might be making contact that should NOT be making contact. Then check your solder joints (maybe suck up some of that solder and reflow them a little more cleanly).

Once that is sorted out - recheck your grounding scheme to make sure everything that needs to be grounded is actually grounded.

[sanderrdam]

Thanks for your reply.
I did all the things you mentioned, but it still didn't work.
I ordered some new parts and build a slightly different version and it worked instantly.

Thanks anyway!