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clip off the lead ends closer to the joint on al those things too. you could be shorting something.

also if you are testing the circuit not mounted in an enclosure, run a gnd wire to the output jack sleeve.  that's normally grounded to the enclosure, so outside of a box it needs ground.

Yeah, I've looked at the board pretty carefully before and didn't notice any shorting at the joints but I'll take a closer look.  I appreciate the advice.

Just taking a quick look it appears you have a number of suspect solder joints on both the PCB. I would reflow all PCB pads first and see if that does the trick.  In the future, I would make sure you apply sufficient heat before adding solder.  Etched PCBs are harder to heat up compared fabbed PCBs and are harder to deal with in general (My first 3 attempts were all unsuccessful).  In this case, I would just make sure to heat those pads up until the solder melts into the traces.  Hopefully that will do the trick!

Thanks for the soldering tip.  I have never worked with etched boards before and prefer to do my soldering outdoors so my hands could have used some heating as well as the circuit board     As an afterthought, I want to build some kind of ventilation hood so I can solder freely in the garage.

I admit it.  I need help!!!  I'm a little discouraged since its been a couple weeks since I started soldering and can't get it to work.

This is my first pedal build but have had plenty of soldering experience. 
This is a Haberdasher etched quasar -- wired as an AC booster. 

I haven't put in the LED in yet and I realized afterwards I wired the switch backwards from the build document,  and had to desolder and resolder a few times.    True bypass works in the OFF position, but the on position yields no sound.  Some of the IC pins are getting voltage in the ON position.       
Any help would be appreciated.  I've tested each wire for continuity as well, they are solid cat 5 26-28 guage wires.

http://imageshack.com/a/img537/5236/ILSydy.jpg
http://imageshack.com/a/img540/3594/AQ80w8.jpg
http://imageshack.com/a/img540/9326/skDOFE.jpg

Here's a link to the build doc.
http://www.madbeanpedals.com/projects/Quasar/docs/Quasar.pdf
Here's a link to a build I used as sort of an inspiration.
http://www.madbeanpedals.com/forum/index.php?topic=9568.msg84036#msg84036