Hey, Umlaut.
It's great that you've been able to breadboard and play it. Thanks a lot for all your input. It's going to save me, and possibly others, some time.
My parts came in this afternoon and I'm looking forward to breadboarding it myself, but it's going to have to wait a bit. Hopefully, no longer than two weeks.
Oh, and I found some BC550's the other day. I might give them a whirl too.

I also have a couple of questions:
1. Did you use the 2N5089 transistors?
2. Now that you have some hands-on (and ears-on) experience, how to would you describe the voicing of this preamp?

M.

Thanks for all the info and hints. I'm about to order the parts that I don't have in my stash and as soon as they arrive, I'll start breadboarding. Provided nothing unexpected gets in the way, that is.
As far as the higher voltage goes, I happen to have an LT1054-based voltage doubler put together, so I'll give it a try at roughly 18V too.
Have a good one and stay tuned!
M

Thanks for the reply, Umlaut.
Looking at the schematic, I also expect it to sound like a Marshall on steroids. Like a DSL or a Bogner Ecstasy perhaps?
Speaking of snubber caps, do you mean in parallel with collector resistors?

Hi, everyone, first build-related post of mine   
Soon, I'm going to build Joe Davisson's 4-stage Vulcan preamp using the schematic posted on his website and I have a few questions before I embark on this project.
1. Has anyone tried it?
2. If so, how does it sound? Judging by the number of gain stages, it's a hard rock / heavy metal machine.
3. I'm going to use BC337 transistors because I have a lot of them (not much of anything else tbh). Apart from pinout and biasing, is there anything I should specifically pay attention to?
I'm going to breadboard it first and, of course, I'll keep the forum updated on the progress. That, however, may take a while because adult life is the way it is
Stay tuned.