That looks ridiculously familiar-did you have this assembled at chandler's guitar xperience? Quite a few years ago, there was a guitar which looked just like this which the owner of said guitar was kind enough to let me play.

UPDATE: as it turns out, it was normal to get the horrid midrange distortion I was hearing. Cut a long story short, I did the "R28 mod", along with C11 and C12. After spending 5 minutes feeling ridiculously nervous and feeling like a fucking bomb disposal expert, I am pleased to report that although it has lost the boost in volume, the distortion has gone and it is now destined to become a staple of my pedalboard <3

Fucking awful.I live near charlie chandler, I might take it over to his shack tomorrow.

Nope, board is still tightly in place

1. No Crackling 2. No crackling 3. It's only near the upper range of the guitar's volume that you get the overdrive/distrotion. I think I wasn't very clear when I said crackling, sorry about that. I meant the distortion that it causes, which sounds very crackly, not that there's background noise. Sorry!

Oh right, Sorry Bypassed on my laney vc30, completely clean with no breakup at all. THe reason I bought the amp. P90 engaged, kinda crackly distortion going on with chords, and the popping I talked about. New battery.

using a dunlop brick.

On the advice of this board and others, I bought a second hand phase 90 on Gumtree for 50 quid. Great deal. However, today, I plug it in, and find that, while it works, it causes a whole lot of popping and crackle. It seems to distort chords if you play them to hard, and single notes seem t have a really nasty "popping attack, whenever you use a pick. Any ideas what the problem could be?

I'm wondering whether to get a small stone or phase 90. I'm looking for a lush, yet subtle phaser which works well under arpeggiated chords, and such. It will always be on a slow-ish setting, never more than 12 o'clock. I play music that sounds like a mix of coldplay, rhcp and muse. Oh, and my setup is a 1981 Thinline tele, line 6 echo park, Red witch flanger, Way Huge Swollen Pickle, Blackstar Ht-dual into a Vox AC30. Thanks for the help, guys!