Ah, the precious precious Ge diode

Did you solder that board in the same time spacing as your posts? 40 minutes to populate the board is a radical time. Takes me much longer.

When you get to it, have a look at my Julius Squeezer thread for details on using a multimeter to set the FET bias. I can't recall what voltage I settled on (around 1.3v) but it's got just the right amount of juicy tone and compression.