HELP!! big muff transistor weirdness...

[mongo]

Happy new year!

well, I built a BIG MUFF using the TONEPAD layout, and for the first test it worked for like, 3 seconds. after that the usual, I looked for shorts and bad soldering, and while the the pedal finally worked,it has very very low output.

searching for the problem I took out one of the 2N5089 trannies (marked as Q1 in the tonepad layout) and the pedal came back to life! I replaced the transistor and the problem came back.I had then some radio interference that comes and goes, but the circuit pretty much works with very low output if I take out that Q1 transistor.

So what's the deal here? where I could start to search for the problem?

I have built this circuit before but this is the first time I encounter this weird behavior,I hope the more experienced builders can identify what might be a very usual and dumb problem .

Thanx!
Andy

[Taylor]

Man, if I didn't know anything about pedals and I saw that title...

[petemoore]

Have you measured the transistor pins voltages from ground with DMM?