Scratchy pots, but the pot isn't the problem.

[compassaudio]

So I've build a fuzz pedal I've been working on a couple times, and both times I've built it the tone knob pot is "scratchy". I'm assuming at this point that it's a capacitor issue, or something that's leaking DC on the pot. But I've built it a couple times with different types of capacitors and potentiometers, and the same issue is still there. I've even tried diferent value capacitors to see if they were too small or something.

Is there something else that could be causing this issue that I'm not thinking about?

[idy]

What circuit? Layout etc? tried measuring DC on the pot?

[compassaudio]

Hys



Just measured it and it says there's 560mV across the Tone pot. This is the portion of the circuit that the tone knob is in. It's immediately followed by a transistor gain stage. The thing that is weird to me is that it's only happening on the Tone pot. Not the Gain pot before it, and no pots afterwards.

[idy]

You cut the image off right before the following transistor. Can't see what is going on there. You could put a large capacitor between the transistor and the tone pot and probably solve it. 1uf?

[idy]

Not at all weird, as the gain pot has caps before and after it. The tone pot is attached to whatever DC is on the base of the next transistor.

[compassaudio]

Oh dang, that would definitely explain it. I'll give that a try, thanks!