Viceroy, fired up right away but clearly has way too little gain and level. First suspect is the JFET's, I used MMBF4393's since I couldn't find PF5102's, but the pinout should be correct and the original thread by Chuck says
There is nothing magic about the 2N5457 and since I don't have any, I tried PF5102 and MPF4393. Both work, but the PF5102 has slightly higher gain in this circuit so I went with that one.
So I think the MMBF4393's should be fine here. "Slightly lower gain" doesn't really describe what I get, it's barely above unity and is a really weak low gain OD if I dime everything, going into maybe mid gain OD range with the juice dimed.
Also used a 2N5088 for Q4, but the gain difference there is hFE 300 to 400 or 350 to 450 according to the datasheet, so a difference, but shouldn't be that huge.
Edit: Q1 has 1.5V and doesn't boost the signal very much (obviously), so I'll try switching that one out I guess. The resistors around it seemed to be correct based on the color bands, although I'm mostly guessing the color bands since fuck me if I can tell between brown and red for sure, or whether something is gray or violet for example. Especially round here where the sun shines for 15 minutes every third day so I have to rely on lights which cause heavy reflections on the resistor :F
Edit2: Nope, switching Q1 did not help, so there must be something else wrong. Maybe I should post a troubleshooting thread.