bloody finger distortion tone control (inductor)

[tomasjjj]

hi guys, so, built myself a clone of the gtc 'bloody finger' overdrive pedal. works pretty well, but there is a strange dead spot from about 8 o'clock to 12 o'clock on the tone control .fully left the sounds perfect, but as you turn it the sound becomes pretty lofi/crackly, before sounding like a starved transistor, to then nearly silent , before doing the reverse . tried 4 different pots, so can eliminate that, and checked the transistors, all good there. solder joints all good, and built this on 3 different pcbs, all have exact same problem! used this schematic https://www.pedalpcb.com/product/chromedome/. but layouts different . weird thing is, in that zone on the tone pot, if you touch the shaft, the crackling dies down quite a bit, even when its out of the enclosure ,i.e not chassis grounded . is this something to do with this inductor/transformer tone control interference ! and quiet playing comes through , but harder string hits result in absolute silence until the tone control is moved. weird!!!