Odd Klone issue

[nate77]

I haven't been around in about a year unfortunately, but as I've settled back in and found myself in a band again, I've come across an old thorn.... Last year when I was pumping out pedals left and right, I had built a Klone from aion electronics, and I loved it. However, I didn't leave room for a battery jack (because too many things have gone wrong while playing out that I feel it's necessary), so I built a second. Unfortunately, the second one has a strange problem; it works perfectly when first plugged in (usually), but after an indiscriminate amount of time (10-90 minutes) it begins to break up at high volumes, become too distorted use. Shortly after that, it cuts out completely. LED fails, the signal cuts out and it simply passes signal at unity. To make this stranger, I built this true bypass, so when the circuit fails, the signal shouldn't be able to pass at all. I apologize for the long post, gotta re-acclimate  myself

[Groovenut]

Is this using a battery for power or wall wart?

Did you remove C3, R3, R4 and R26 (the buffered bypass signal line) from the circuit when you built this as true bypass?

It sounds like it's a power issue. Since you say the LED dies, I dont think it's the charge pump chip. More than likely a) a dying 9V alkaline battery, b) a carbon based 9V battery or c) a failing wall wart (specifically a bad filter cap in the wall wart)

just my guess

[edy_wheazel]

 I also suspect the charge pump. Try replacing IC3 and C19 to C22, also C17 and C18.

[aion]

Someone else had an issue similar to this with a Refractor and it turned out to be a corroded power jack. Just one of those weird one-in-100,000 things that are impossible to debug with the standard methods! But yeah, I'd say that the issue is most likely outside of the PCB (jack, wall wart, loose ground connection) or could also be the zener diode or one of the caps in the filter section.