fender 6g15 standalone reverb distortion

[joelw]

hi everyone,
I just finished my first tube project, and i'm having trouble finding the source of some unwanted distortion. I built a 6g15 reverb clone which works well except that it distorts when the reverb mix and dwell are turned up. It works fine when they are set to low amounts(at least i can't hear the distortion.) It is a sizzly buzzy distortion that sounds like it is on the reverb signal, not the dry signal, but i'm not sure about it being exclusively the wet half. Changing tubes did nothing, except a 6v6 in the place of the 6k6 made it worse, and a 12ax7 in place of the 12at7 made it worse. All the voltages are within 10% of the fender schematic, and the ot and reverb pan match well enough(8ohm output on the ot and 10 ohm input on the pan.) Can a pan be overdriven or damaged? could it be a bad output transformer? Could i be overdriving the 12ax7 even though the listed voltages are right? None of these seem that probable to me, but i can't think of what else it might be. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
thanks in advance,
joel

[H Chandler]

Does it get better when you turn down the guitar?

What kind of pickups or active electronics in the guitar?. Are you using pedals or ?

[joelw]

It does get better when i turn my guitar down about half way, but im only using p-90 and strat single coil pickups, no pedals connected

[H Chandler]

First Isolate the problem

Disconnect the wire to dry signal triode.

With the dwell low and the mix all the way up, do you still hear the distortion?

Have you tried changing the dry/ recovery tube?

If you have access to another amp with a reverb unit, try using it to make sure you have a good tank.

Make sure you're not overdriving the amp that it's going into- Keep the amp vol low.

If you haven't already, check out Weber's Kit's forum. They're a friendly bunch and will help friendly folks even if they're not building a Weber unit.

[joelw]

So I disconnected the wire, and turned up the mix and the dwell down, the distortion is definately less with the dwell down than it is up. The overall volume also goes down as the dwell goes down. About 1/3 of the way up, the dwell starts to distort pretty noticably.
Yes i've changed the recovery tube, and im not overdriving the amp.

I dont have another amp w/ reverb to test the pan, but i have another pan around. Any way to check the imput output impedance on an annonomous pan?

I'll look on the weber forum too.
thanks