Dr. Boogie. 1 issue I need advice on.

[elenore19]

Hey everyone,
So I built a Dr. Boogie (my 3rd build of this pedal..) and I have it all hooked up and it works great.
BUT-
When I open it up and move the PCB around a little bit, it squeals and it seems that the volume knob all of the sudden gets boosted to full and the volume pot doesn't do anything while this is happening.
I fixed the pedal so that it works great with how I have it set up and closed all up tight. But I know that if someone opens the pedal that the little movement of the board would probably cause the pedal to go ape shit again.

I feel that this is unacceptable seeing as I'm going to sell this to my friend's dad.

THE QUESTION:
Is there any specific place I should check first?
I assume something is either making contact with something it shouldn't, or something is loose and disconnecting where it shouldn't.
It's a tight enclosure that I made super neat, which means that looking around in it is tough and semi-annoying for me. I'd really prefer to not to have to rewire the whole deal.
Thanks for any help you're willing to give!

-Elliot

[MetalUpYerEye]

Dr. Boogie is kind of noise-prone. I have built two of them (one for myself and one for my brother) and I don't think i'll be building any more of them. The first one is acceptable but still a noise-fest. The second one I built was squealing and oscillating like no ones business until I swapped the first jfet for an MPF102 rather than the usual J201. It actually cleaned up very nicely although the overall gain is about 30% less. Even so the Dr. Boogie has so much gain to begin with that i've never really used the gain past 12 o'clock so the difference doesn't matter to me.

As for your volume problem i'd probably try to get it to malfunction and then shut it down and check for continuity between the lugs on the volume pot. That should give you a good idea of what is connecting to what when it happens and you'll have a place to start tracking it down.

[zeeman]

... and it seems that the volume knob all of the sudden gets boosted to full and the volume pot doesn't do anything while this is happening.

You very well could have a bad volume pot.

Also, I would suggest using shielded wire for at least the input/output wires.

Give that a try and let us know.

zeeman

[Schappy]

Take it out of the enclosure and see if it works like it should. If it does you have a grounding problem. Might have a bad pot as well.

[FlyingZ]

I would wick and re-solder ground connections first.