debug question

[fatfoot51]

I was trying to debug another one of my pedals but since I was at a standstill, I tried looking for shorts with my DMM... Why would I do something like that? I don't know considering resistors don't short and only diodes and caps do once in a great while... Being still new to this game I thought why not.. The meter has a function where when you put the leads together theres a loud beep... I got a beep across a resistor so I desoldered an end thinking I was parallell across something else that shorted and still got the beep.. It measures resistance normally but when that function is on it beeps and on any other resistors that doesn't happen.. Why? Weird!  Plus this pedal has negative voltages on all legs of all the ics, and before I throw more parts at this thing I need to know why the voltages are negative ( my negative lead is touching the chassis)... It would be nice to have another deluxe big muff to compare to that was working... My version is the parallell /series switch kind.. Thanks much to all...