I wanted to build an analog VU meter to put on my stereo setup (and to maybe sell some on ebay). So i looked for driver circuits, because i have about 0 experiance with driving such devices, and found
http://objectivesounds.co.uk/articles/driving-vu-and-other-ac-meters/ and based my design around Figure. 6

My eagle design
But the problem is that the 500uA meter its designed for goes instantly out of range

.
The reason is the leakage current in stand by is about 2mA. The only thing I can do about that is to increase R6 to some rediculus value of about 500K 1G

where I can get it dow to about 1-10uA but completely removes thw ability to make adjustments with the trimer.
I have put hours of testing inot this and can not for the life of me figure out what is wrong, is it the design, one of the components or even the PCB? I don´t know, please help I´m going crazy looking at this
Also if someone has some time and is in the mood for looking over a design by someone who is at the moment only a hobbyist but is planing to make it his profession here is the full drawing and layout


(R7,9,10,11,12 are unpopulated, shorted or populated depending on my input signal)