I whipped up a clone of the old Dallas Rangemaster pedal for myself this week.  I used an AC187 germanium transistor, which is an NPN, so I can use a standard negative-ground wiring scheme.  I used metal-film resistors for lower noise, as the original carbon-composition resistors were known to be hissy in this circuit.  I also added a reverse-biased IN34 germanium diode across the base-emitter junction to negate temperature effects on the transistor.  No PCB, just a piece of perfboard.  It’s a really simple circuit that sounds great in front of an AC30 style amp (Laney VC30 in my case).  These boxes were pretty popular in the 60s and 70s with British guitarists.  They don’t really distort themselves, they just push the preamp section of your amplifier harder.