I wrote this thing below, then it struck me. Im using an universal board (first time), something like a PCB with lots of holes. I realized that some holes are connected. Then I facepalmed myself. The whole circuit is one big short. I have to desolder everything and start over. At least I learned how to test a circuit. Thanks for help everybody !
Btw. I have one question before I get to putting it back together again. I want to put a LED between battery +9V and pin 6. Is this ok ? I don't know what kind of LED it is (salvaged). Won't it eat too much power ? After all Little Gem has only 1/2W, and the LED can have about 1W. Can I limit the power it gets somehow ? I include pictures of my failure

QuoteThe speaker is fine, it reads 7.3Ohms and I use it in my combo everyday. I measured resistance between pins 4 and 5 of the IC it reads 2 MOhms in circuit, 11 when I take it out.

I decided to torture my circuit again today. I made sure that the connection to the speaker is ok, hooked a 9V. It takes less than a second for the IC to get burning hot, this time however nothing from the speaker. I disconnected speaker and measured voltage between speaker output + and gnd. I discovered that whenever I connect power, there is a constant voltage of 4.96V. Also it showed that at least some of the caps are good, cause the voltage drops slowly after disconnecting the power source.
I read in another topic that I can test the electrolytic caps by measuring the resistance on them. Both read over 2MOhms, that indicates they are fine.

I recently build my second DIY amp (the first one was simple TDA2030 hifi amp on 9V), using design Little Gem Mk1. I hooked it up to my Peavey's Rage 258 speaker (8ohm), a fresh 9V and my guitar. The amp was producing good sound for about 1-2 sec. Then it died. LM386 was buring hot, so I disconnected the battery quickly to avoid damaging the IC, but I fear it could have died.
I took my time and built the amp very carefully, checked the solders with a multimeter. The only differences are that I didn't connect the gain pot, and master vol pot (hard to get in my area). The gain pot isn't necessary for the amp to run according to the instruction. I thought the master vol pot isn't necessary (it should pass full power to the speaker when at certain setting right? ) so i skipped it and hooked speaker to - of 220u cap, and ground, does this cause the problem, or something else ? Too low speaker impedance ? Bad IC ? I guess in few places my soldering skill could be lousy, but I don't think it did cause the problem.

Link to the design, just in case 
http://www.runoffgroove.com/littlegem.html