Any use for noisy Ge transistors?

[music6000]

I've got a small handful of RCA germanium pnp transistors with decent gain for fuzz faces. DCA 55 reports no leakage too, but they're very noisy in every circuit I've tried them in. I tried them in some broadcast builds and fuzz face circuits on the breadboard and they were unusable. I haven't tried using them as diodes yet. Is there anything else I could try?

Put em in a Fuzz Factory, it couldn't sound worse in that Circuit!

 

[benny_profane]

An option to try is a crude noise gate with series antiparallel diodes and a parallel resistor with a divider to set the loss. You’d of course be introducing crossover distortion, but it may be worth trying.