Build Your Own Clone Message Board

For my second build ever I decided to build an Octave Fuzz but after completing the build (this was about a month ago) I ran into a problem. It quite simply does not work.
The pedal produces sound when bypassed but when the effect is activated you hear nothing (no noise either). The LED does not turn red when the effect is switched on. I've been using the pedal with a battery which is totaly new (I've also tried other batteries but with no luck either0.

I made some pictures which I will include below and I hope this is clear enough for you guys to see (the photos were taken by my mobile phone).

I hope you guys can help
Carsten

P.S.
As these photo's are quite big and blurry I also added a link (here: link) to see the whole ImageShack album. Here you can see scaled down versions of the photo which makes them easier to see.

Edit: Photos removed because they were to big. Scroll down 2 posts to see them.

Soldering is a little "blobby". Could use some cleaning up.

Could you resize these photos and repost them, please? Too big to be useful. Try to get them small enough to fit on one screen at normal resolution settings.

Here are the resized pictures:

Thanks for resizing the pics.

I can almost guarantee that your problem is due to the quality of your soldering. I see a lot of blobby joints and it doesn't appear that your solder is flowing properly and "wetting out" the substrate. For example, looking at the component side of the board, a well-formed solder joint on the back will almost always flow through the PCB eyelet and be visible. This is not the case with many of your solder joints. The joints themselves should be smooth and conical in shape, not blobby and irregular. Also, excess component leads and wire ends should be trimmed down as close to the top of the joint as possible.

As a first step, I would suggest going through the entire build with a good hot iron and reflowing every solder joint. This only takes maybe 20 - 30 minutes to do, and often solves these kinds of problems. If that doesn't help, post back here and we'll take it from there....

+1 to what DVM is saying. and just to add, a couple joints looked starved, especially the pots. those joints support the board in the enclosure, you want them good and strong so they don't go cold from normal movement.

Thanks a lot all, it now fully works!
I did as you say and redid every connection. I also made sure the wiring (except for the footswitch which I couln't easily reach with the tools I had at hand) was a bit shorter so there would be no excess wires. Also I just took away lots of solder as most connections just had too much.

Thanks again!

Now I just need a proper amp to run it through

Easy'nuff.... build a Champlifier!