OK, I rebuilt this thing from the ground up.  Did it on a perf board (was on the Radio Shack Board).  Did it real slow and checked each solder as I did it.  I still have a problem.  When the Tone is turned all the way up it kind of sputters.  Kinda like there's a loose connection somewhere (intermitant).  However with the Tone all the way off, it sounds better.  You can get a real sweet spot with the Tone all the way down, Gain rolled off about 50%, Grit swithch on and Volume all the way up.  Also, I don't think it's as loud as it should be.  I have changed out the Tone switch, cap on the Tone pot and retouched every solder joint.  I have also checked continutity of all gound connections.  I have changed out the amp and transistor.  I have check, double checked and triple checked the layout.  I checked everything I can think of. Can someone help?

Yeah I built it on a RS IC.  What could go wrong with it.  The traces look good.  I could swap the board because that would force me to redo it and mybe find where I messed it up.

Of course I didn't use sockets.  That would make this too easy. 

I think I may have measured wrong before.  The voltage at pin 6 is 8.9VDC and at pin 5 is 8.0VDC.  Adjusting the volume does changes nothing.  Still this is not working correctly.  When I measure across the speaker I get nothing.  I expected the same reading as pin 5.

I'm starting to think I have no idea what I'm doing.  (I've successfully build 2 tube amps and several stomp boxes)

approximately

I built the noisy cricket in a cigar box with a 4 inch speaker.  Used the RadioShack IC.  I powered it up and no output.  It's dead quiet, no hum.  Power LED works.  I checked the voltage at pin 5 of the LM386 and got ~8.6VDC.  Adjusted the volume all the way down and got ~7.9 VDC.  I have checked the build against the schematic several times and can't see a mistake.  Is there some troubleshooting steps I should take.  Help.

Going to build the noisy cricket.  how do you wire up that dpdt grit switch to the grit led?  is a standard on-on dpdt switch the correct one.