Ok, some things I’ve noticed about my build while waiting for the transformer to arrive. One side of C9 touched the mic frame, so I put electric tape against the frame there. They didn’t have continuity, but honestly they were clearly touching, so maybe it wasn’t a lot but enough? I found several point in which resistors were touching leads. I don’t know if that’s a problem, but I fixed it anyway. Found several points on the PCB in which the outside layer had flaked off and copper was touching the mic frame, potentially grounding a point where signal goes to figure 8 (I followed the schematic, it literally did), I noticed a lead sticking out pretty far under the tube socket because I had to move something after the fact due to a misread of the socket silk. I was able to get tweezers in there and just move the lead so it wasn’t touching the tube socket from behind.
I also retouched up almost every solder joint I could reach on the socket pcb and the main pcb.
I built this back when I was using this very thick solder and I’m ashamed at how bad some of the joints I hadn’t seen in awhile looked like. They’re all silver and smooth now.
If my new transformer workers perfectly, it may also be some of those changes. Wish me luck.