Noisy Cricket help

[Adam]

I've just finished building a noisy cricket, however no sound. If everything is cabled up the power LED comes on and I get a click when I turn the cricket on, but no sound through the circuit. I've re-flowed all solder joints and reversed the transistor with no change. Can anyone give me some pointers as to how to step through the circuit to hopefully isolate where the problem is, or point me to some more info? Thanks for any help.

I've built an AX84 P1-eX amp and a number of pedals in the past and had no problems. I guess I was just lucky as I realize now my circuit troubleshooting skills aren't what I hoped they would be.

[Adam]

After stepping through the circuit I found I forgot a ground connection between the input jack and the board. D'OH!!! That's what happens when you put down a project incomplete and pick it up 3 months later. I still have some weird fuzz and volume issues as well as a bit of hum. When the tone is on 0 the hum isn't so bad and the weird volume cut-out/fuzz issue seems to go away, however when the tone is on anything above 0 the volume will go from normal to almost 0 (but never completely cut-out) and I get some intermittent undesirable fuzz sounds. I'm hoping going through and dressing my leads better will fix it, however any insight into what might be causing this is appreciated.

In case anyone is interested The above problems were worse when I used a LM386N-1 than with a LM386N-3, both tests were done with 9v battery. This thing actually sounds pretty decent. It's not going to replace my Marshall, but if you have a good sounding guitar in front of it it sounds pretty damn good.