Noisy Cricket Amp Build Troubles

[Aeroplane]

Hi Folks!

I'm a electrical engineer (more on the building/power side than audio/micro/signals though) and I got an electric guitar a couple years ago.  I thought that building my own amp would be a great project, so I decided to start small, with an LM386-based amp.  I followed the basic schematics used by the following links: http://www.electrosmash.com/noisy-cricket-analysis
http://diystrat.blogspot.com/2014/03/building-noisy-cricket-mk-ii-and-mini.html
I ordered parts, dug out my old breadboard from college, threw it together, and promptly ran into a wall.

When I plug in my guitar and hook it up to a bookshelf speaker (or headphones), it occassionally makes some buzzing sounds, but that's about it.  I'm afraid that the LM386 chip I bought (off ebay) might be a counterfeit.  Or my 9V battery might not be up to snuff.  If anybody has any general tips, I'd appreciate it, because otherwise I'm stumped for while.  Thanks!

[Loudthud]

The most basic piece of test equipment is a digital Volt meter (DVM). You can usually find cheap ones for around $10 USD. Sometimes at Harbor Freight they give them away if you buy something else, even a pack of 9V batteries.

[incurably_optimistic]

If you do have a digital multimeter you can of course check if battery measures around 9v (but if it's not 100 years old then it shouldn't really be a problem, as this circuit should work with supply voltage as low as 4-5v I suppose). If it does (and if you have any other audio amp) then I'd advise setting up a simple audioprobe (you can read about it here) and probing through the circuit starting from the input. If you do get the signal up to pin 2 but not on pint 5 of lm386 and pins 6/4 are connected to +9v/GND, then there is a chance that your chip is dead.

But the easiest way to troubleshoot would be to provide us with some pictures of your build  :dbtu: