A couple Ruby questions

[trimbandit]

I finally got my Ruby working. Initially the amp was really quiet and I wasn't to happy. Both the pots worked, but even cranked up all the way the volume was very low. I figured it wasn't the 386, as both gain stages seemed to work so I swapped out all the components on the breadboard.

I was still really quiet, so I bought another 386 and now it's quite loud. Much louder than I thought it would be.

Anyway, I only seem be able to get a clean tone over about 25% of the possible gain. I was wondering if this was typical? I'm using an N-1 from radio shack w/ 9V. I'm going to try an N-3 @ 12V and see if that helps with more headroom.

Also, I was wondering if anyone has tried multiple brands of the 386's? I'm not crazy about the way the distortion sound on my LM386-N1 from the Shack. Has anyone done a comparison of different 386s?

Thanks, CMG

[octafish]

There is heaps of info already posted on the ruby. A quick fix to get heaps of headroom and volume is to replace the gain control with a =<10 uF cap across pins 1 and 8. I made mine switchable with a fixed value resistor as a "dirty" switch, it drops volume substantially when dirty however. I never got a clean tone from my original two knob ruby.