Millenium Bypass 2 Troubleshooting

[plinio]

Hi everyone,
I have been having trouble getting a millenium bypass 2 to function properly and have not been able to find the solution in any threads here.
Up till now I have only used 3pdt switches, and thought I'd try the millenium 2 in my latest 2 pedals.  One pedal is a fuzz face derivative, and the other has 2 jack orman's mosfet boosts in series (with a footswitch for each).  Both pedals seem to work fine at first use, but are very idiosyncratic. 

The double boost will pop the first couple of times I switch it, then work flawlessly with completely silent switching.  And after I use it for a little while, sometimes the bypassed signal will be barely audible until I use one of the boosts again.  It's very strange and intermittent.  Also, if I quickly turn the boost gain from 10 to 0 the led will come on (in bypass mode) and then bleed out over the next second.

The fuzz face (germanium pnp transistors) bypasses perfectly with very smooth switching, but at some settings, when bypassed the led will remain on (It usually bleeds out over a few seconds).  The pedal oscillates at some settings (this is intentional) but sometimes that signal can be heard when the pedal is bypassed and the led will blink at the frequency of the oscillation (obviously this is only visible when it is oscillating at low frequencies).

I have tried all of the common fixes to malfunctioning millenium bypasses:
1.  Both pedals have either 100k volume pots or 100k pull down resistors after the output cap.
2.  I have tried putting a 1 Meg resistor between the control leg of the switch and ground.  Whenever this is connected the led goes off when the effect is on, but still remains on when bypassed and the knobs are in certain positions.
3.Everything is wired correctly (I'm pretty sure after to months of checking and rechecking).  Also the pinouts are correct for the manufacturers of my transistors.

I am using a bs170 for the mosfet, 1n4148 for the high leakage diode, and the bc junction of a 2n5089 for the low leakage diode.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.  I would like to figure this out and am stuck.

[R.G.]

First of all it's important to remember what the Millenium Bypass does: the switch wiring does the bypassing. The FET circuitry **indicates** the state of the switch. The special wiring of the bypass DPST gives you true bypass, and also gives a connection to the Millenium circuit to let it indicate correctly.

I suggest this: get the Millenium circuit working *before* even hooking it into the effect. The Millenium circuit is a sensitive indicator of the difference between any resistance below 1M to ground and a really open circuit, no wire connection at all. You can test out the Millenium circuit by manually touching a 1M to ground to the control line with no effect connection at all.

People commonly get the Millenium II's MOSFET backwards, which leaves the LED on all the time through the MOSFET body diode.