VOX Double Sound Fuzz vs BJTs

[Max]

A long time ago ('96 maybe) a friend of mine borrowed a VOX double sound wah vintage that was sounding great, so I decided to copy the circuit and make a stand alone fuzz (at the time I couldn't find a wah inductor, so no point in replicating the wah...).
It came out a little nasty fuzz with no controls, just two BC238B and few other things. Now, after all this time, I found a VOX V847 broken for a few euros and fixed it and then I thought: let's build that little fuzz again, I still have the schematics (check attachment)!
And so I did but with MPSA18, that are also used in the newer VOX wah replacing the BC238B.
Since I was not really happy with the sound, or maybe it's just my memory failing, I decide to put in two BC238B as I did the first time.
After struggling a bit to find them (on EBAY) I checked the hfe and it's in the specs, so I put them in the circuit but it doesn't work.
What's puzzling me is that a BC238B as T2 doesn't work, really no signal at all, while as T3 together with an MPSA18 works but the sound is crap (and I've tried ten of them).
How come that 22 years ago it worked right away without even checking the transistors?