To be honest I've switched back to 2N5088s (900 hfe) now, as they are the closest to the old 2N5133s in terms of hfe(300-1100) .
BTW the guy at the shop is not so way off the track..in the muff the hfe of transistors isn't so foundamental since the clipping stages are pushed by another transistor before..
So after trying several shades of transistor I can say:
Going toward higher gains will make your muff more brittle (good for Ram's Head clones) and that's good for chords, especially if you have a metal attitude alà J Mascis.
Keep in mind that new higher gain trannies are too quite..and that's bad for vintage noiselovers.. :-\
Using modern lower gain will make your muff more whooly, or, to say the truth, less brittle (as less signal is passing thru the clipping diodes).
Using odd designed lower gains , as 2N2222, could make you an happy man because they're very noisy (
) and that's why, when they squeeze themself in the muff cyrcuit , you can get more sustain from it.BTW, I think that in Triknobs-muff the transistor changing is even less dramatic for the overall gain , since they sport 390k resistors in the feedback stage ,against 470ks that are in the later muffs..so using 2N2222 in this case will make everything more sweet because of their odd construction without subctracting distortion almost at all.
