working mint stopped working when cased up

okay, so i had to borrow a drill from a friend, so my mint amp was just hanging out on the helping hands for a week or so. it worked perfectly! i drilled the holes and filled the altoids tin up, and suddenly only the right channel worked. i pulled it out a bit and saw where i thought the output wires may be touching, so i fixed that. then only the left channel works! i just resoldered the input and outputs to the board, which is a pain, because i already split the pcb in half and reattached the +,-,l,r,g.

could shorting out one of the channel have damaged part of the amp? i've checked 10 times over and don't see anything touching where it shouldn't, both the solder jobs and the tiny bits of stripped wire down by the board. it all looks clean.

would pics or meter readings help diagnose this? what parts? thanks for the help.

the outside part of the jack, where the nut tightens, is metal.

i took it completely out again, though. it's still only in the left channel. i'm afraid that maybe something shorted when i put it in the case, and now part of it is fried?

great sound in one chan and no sound at all in the other. which symptom corresponds to a fried rail splitter? ill try testing that, thanks

also, i accidentally fried my led while testing a few things (though i'm quite clueless as to what i was testing lol). touched one of the led legs to one of the legs of the crowbar diode. think that diode could be fried? i'm going to be ordering stuff soon, so just thought i'd check if its a possibility

well, the voltage from the rail splitter to the +/- of each chip is fine.

i found something pretty strange.. the voltage from the output's ground to the output's left channel is .001v, while the output's right channel is .666v

i think it's possessed :S any idea what that means? between the output ground and output's broken channel is a lot more voltage that with the working one..

thanks for the responses.

my op-amp isn't bad, but maybe i fried it. if it was fried, though, would i get great sound in the left ear? it sounds like it did before i cased it up, just in 1 ear. it did work perfectly (sounded great! no static or anything, and really improved the sound with my e3cs). i think that what happened was some of the jack wires touched or something as i put it in the case. i blew a power cap on my cmoy, and it exploded with a loud pop.. didn't hear anything like that. no weird noises at all. no smells or lights, either, except when i accidentally connected the led to the crowbar with my meter probes, which kinda sparked for a sec until the led died.

i didn't see any stray wires or solder bridges. the wires are a little too stripped (need to get some smaller heat shrink, since i switched to cat5 hookups), so some were bare and must've touched when i was moving the jacks to the holes in the case. that's fixed, though, so nothing touches. i resoldered them and they're fine. also, i have a piece of tangent's teflon between the two halves, so nothing should be touching there. it worked just fine right after i put the two halves together and connected them.

any other guesses as to what could get fried by i/o jack wires touching? i'll get out my meter and check that stuff as soon as my boy goes to sleep.

would pics of any particular areas help?

"check to see that the chips are getting power and signal"
-the v+/- for each chip was fine. can't remember what the numbers were.. i think around 4 or so. the batteries are slightly drained, so..

wow i just hooked up the batteries and was going to test it when i noticed one battery was VERY hot. it also measured only ~7.5v while the other, which has identical usage times, measures ~8.5v. it wasn't even turned on yet, but one was burning up and the other one was nice and cool. think my wires are touching down near the board? yet another problem. boo. i may wait for smaller heat shrink tubes to do this job a bit more cleanly time to take the two halves apart.

yeah, i figured i was shorting a battery. i know what the pads are.. i have the gerber files to guide me, as i can't really see all of the silkscreen when the wires are setup.

unfortunately, i didn't get a chance to work on it today. and i won't til the weekend i'm hoping that it'll get straightened out by next week.