[codefox1]

Well, try feeding a know good audio signal into the volume control, (groan) IPOD OK. You could than rule out everything (east) of this part. These old sets are not that fussy about exact impedence match, so long as there are not shorted windings in the primary of the output transformer. Actually you can remove one output tube at a time and run for a short time to confirm this. Might just be a little hum, but if the distortion disappears, do a swapperoo of the output tubes, remove one and run again. Then you can find out if you have a bad tube or possibly some problems with the output transformer that were not immediately apparent. Disregard if you already tried all this, your work looks great. Best.