Bootleg OD

[Jiuk]

Does it look similar?

Choose high hfe(280-290) 2n3904 TR. Low hfe(190-211) TR makes poor sound.

 

[cooder]

Nice! So are you saying you had initially a low gain 2N3904 in there and it sounded poor and then you swapped it for one that tested higher gain?

 

[Ratimus]

Weird; both transistors in that circuit are wired as emitter followers so their individual gains should both be just barely less than one. Maybe you just had some devices from a shoddy batch, indicated by the low hfe. Did you get them all at the same place and sort them? Do they all look identical? Seems odd.

 

[Jiuk]

Nice! So are you saying you had initially a low gain 2N3904 in there and it sounded poor and then you swapped it for one that tested higher gain?

Yes. I did.