Smallsound/Bigsound Buzzz Problem

[olliedf89]

I recently bought a Smallsound/Bigsound Buzzz second hand off of eBay. It's an older model, #45, one of the gold hand painted jobbies sent to an EU music shop I think. Anyway, it worked fine for 2/3 minutes but started giving me crazy unwanted noise, and now that's all it does when I plug it in, totally unusable.

If I just plug in the output it hisses like it's not grounded. When I touch the metal case of my patch cable, it ceases. (yes I've tested with other cables, and in different places in the chain etc), but when I plug in the input as well it gets even worse and farts out horrible noise, not like a hiss more just like a nasty loud feedback. Like someone just hung up on you over the phone but more obnoxious!

The sound is largely unchangeable, twiddling the knobs makes a small difference in volume but doesn't really change it drastically.

I've opened her up and I really can't see any obvious flaws, it's tidy and well made inside.
I'm hoping I haven't bought a dodgy pedal. They're not that common over here so I'd like to make as much of an effort as I can to make it usable.

Any thoughts?

I'll put some pictures up if necessary, in the mean time this is the original listing.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Smallsound-bigsound-buzzz-Fuzz-Pedal-/131374469282?ssPageName=ADME:X:BOCOR:GB:1123

[pantherairsoft]

Sounds like a grounding problem. Ask a tech, or email Brian at SS/BS with some guy shots and I'm sure he'll diagnose it quickly for ya'.

[olliedf89]

I did wonder about grounding. Thank you, good idea. I'll get in touch and see what comes back. Should have thought of that really!