Since it seems I'm the only one wearing this topic into the ground and no one has actually stepped up and said "Yes, I've tried it"
I went ahead and gave it a go.
As an added bonus I made a germanium version with two hfe-matched AC125s (180hfe) and a darlington of two Russian MP10As
(1 hfe 45 with a leak of 28uA and another hfe 32 with a leak of 67uA for a combined hfe of 1440 and leakage of 1876uA) and a
1n4148 6.8k biased at 3.3k.
It works surprisingly well! Nice and clean, with a lot of warmth in the tone.
When I breadboarded this, originally it was not compressing much, this op amp doesn't drive as hot as a 4558, I considered
adjusting the gain network to increase the gain, but it was already pretty noisy with 4 germanium devices in there. I managed
to compensate by replacing the 1n100 with a schottky.
Here it is built on GGG's -old- Orange Squeezer layout along with a board I custom laid out for the Russian darlington.
Temporary enclosure is temporary. I might make this my main "clean" compressor"
Sound clips to come!
