i'm building a distortion pedal but i've hit a design snag...

[methodofcontrol]

Thanks. That was my basic intent, though I had a couple things wrong internally.

If it sounds OK, then fine, move on.

But if you care still.... when you removed or installed your other caps, did you parallel them on the others? Or did you connect them right at the IC power pins? Where you put them matters. The caps I'd have the most concern over would be the small ones, the 0.1uf or whatever. No, I don;t expect 1000uf filters to act any different from 100uf ones.

When you were trying it all out, did you use a variety of amplifiers? Did you feed the thing from a guitar, and from a Wah, and from some other effect? Sometimes combinations matter.

yeah, i've used the pedal in a variety of set ups. but when comparing mine to the original, it was guitar->pedal->amp, (swapping out only the pedals to make the comparison).
as for the caps, when i initially had those bypass caps in play i'm 99% certain that the 100uf and 1 uf were directly in parallel at the IC. i know i didn't use tantalum for the .1 uf, just film caps. i thought the value was more important than the make since it's not a signal cap.

so.. yeah, my pedal sounds "ok". but the original pedal sounds huge! fatter bottom and crisper top.
i found a schematic i drew of the original pedal last night, i forgot i had it. here it is for direct comparison. again... the only differences from mine are in the power supply, so i'm really not sure where i've gone wrong. i've built 3 versions of my pedal and they all sound the same so i think it's safe to rule out an accidental solder bridge or anything like that. right after the input jack you'll see some arrows and some nonsense, that was a note to self about the relay the original pedal uses for switching. i couldn't positively identify the diodes in the original either, one was egg shaped and was grey w/ a black stripe and no other markings, the other i suspected was a 1s1588, so i made my notes accordingly on the schematic. i measured the FV on them and saw no reason i shouldn't just settle on 4148's. (not before comparing 914's, 4001's, LED's, etc...)