(mostly) Civil War Big Muff

[almondcity]

I built this to the Civil War specs with the following items socketed for tweaking (still messing with things a bit):
Q1=MPSA13
(Q2-4=2N5088)
D1=green LED
C5=220nF
(C8=47nF)
C10=3.3nF
C11=8.2nF
R17=20K
R18=30K

I recently built a modified Ram's Head and that one has wayyy more gain. Is there something I can swap in here to try and get more gain? This one is kinda overdrivey until I turn the sustain knob all the way up. Sorta thinking about swapping R7 and R12 for 8.2K but not sure I want to invest in that right now

 

[almondcity]

After further research, perhaps the values of R5, R11, and R16 can be reduced from 390 to 100 to increase gain. I may also play with R1 and set it to 33K. Might unbox this one still and mess with it

 

[almondcity]

Indeed I've been on his site often. I've decided to swap out R5 and R11 without unboxing. I think that should give me more gain.

I've built a green russian and even that one has more gain than this one, that's why I was so surprised when I turned this one on

Edit: I need to unbox to get those resistors out

 

[almondcity]

update on this: I was able to change R1 to about 34K and R5 to about 90 by soldering some resistors in parallel
I also revised C5 back to 100nF and R18 to 22K, really liking this one now

this is by far the least noisy big muff I've built, not sure what to attribute that to, my other GR is much noisier still with similar components