Need help with a vintage Big Muff

[SonicVI]

I bought a "for parts" "Ram's Head" Big Muff off ebay last week for $50.  I got it today and it has pot dates from '74, 2n5133's, carbon comps, silicon diodes, mostly ceramic disc caps, and a replaced tone pot.    I got everything rewired as most of it was gone including the footswitch and I plug it in get some sputtery fizzle and the volume is very low.  I start trying some trouble shooting and find that one of the transistors is suspicious. It's the second clipping stage tranny.  To test it out I touched a good tranny to the solder pads of the suspicious one and I get volume and distortion.  So, I figure it's a bad tranny and I replace it with a new 2n5133. But, I get the same problem.  I test out the old tranny with my DMM and it seems to be ok, fairly low HFE, but not dead.  So I put it back in and keep measuring looking for a bad resistor but have found none yet.       If I just touch the Base and Emitter (not the collector) of a another tranny to second clipping stage tranny it seems to work.  Anybody have any ideas what the problem might be?   

[Papa_lazerous]

your fastest track to problem solving this or for someone to help you is to provide voltages.....

Measure supply voltage (battery) as a reference, then measure CBE on each transistor that should point us in a helpful direction 

[SonicVI]

OK, here are voltages.

V+ = 8.8V

Q1
C = 5.5
B = .63
E = .03

Q2
C = 5.8
B = .68
E = .07

Q3 <--the suspicious one
C = .16  <-low?, the 15K resistor from V+ C reads ok on the meter.
B = .72
E = .08

Q4
C = 2.56
B = 1.75
E = 1.14

[Papa_lazerous]

Hmm the voltage at C of Q3 is low, from the collector of Q3 it goes to the tone stack, check the tone pot and the caps and resistors on the tone stack, I would expect there to be a problem there.  Might also help if you post a schem too

have you tried using an audio probe? just to confirm where you are loosing sound.

[SonicVI]

I've got it working, but I'm not sure exactly how. I didn't end up replacing anything. I did reposition a few caps. Maybe one has a lead that's broken under the coating or something and bending it fixed the connection or something.  I'm kinda puzzled. I'm gonna keep trying to figure it out so it doesn't come back.

[Papa_lazerous]

quite possibly a cap..... between Q3 and tone stack me thinks