The trimpot inside the XO Stereo Clone Theory is actually very easy to tweak, but it has a pretty small area of the turn radius where the chorus effect will work. Many people have complained about the background noise and volume boost that these pedals have. Mine suffers from the same issues. The background hiss really is unacceptable, especially considering that I’ve heard vintage Clone Theories with no hiss at all. It’s obviously not an unavoidable issue when using the MN3007 chip, but rather a design flaw in the new pedals. There’s no reason it should be as noisy as it is, when other MN3007 based pedals don’t have this problem (including the 2002 reissue Small Clone I used to own). After comparing the original Clone Theory schematic with the new XO Stereo version, there are some obvious changes that no doubt contribute to the noise. The 100K trimpot used to adjust the gain of the MN3007 has been removed, and it appears that everything is linked to a single 100K bias trimpot on the new version. As you adjust the bias of the MN3007, you’re also adjusting the gain, which I would imagine is not ideal and most likely explains the volume boost and extra noise. The gain trimpot on the original Clone Theory’s also appeared to be connected to one of the op amps via a capacitor, which most likely helped filter out some of the high frequency hiss everybody hears in the newer version.