WILL these transistor lose some characteristic over time?

no, why would they?
people pay rediculous money for vintage trannies

as i posted on page 3...
PN3565 is not an 2N3565 Equivalent Transistors.

i suggest you go with one of the other two stated, or both.
they are cheap so buy 10 each at least, and use the one that sounds best

can i buld this using another trannie??? 2N3565 are really hard to get As stated by Briggs himself; The use of the 2N3565 transistor is due to some tests carried out a while ago where it was found that the 2N3565 sounded best in these sort of applications, you can replace it with a 2N5088 or BC108 ...

cant really agree on that http://alltransistors.com/transistor.php?transistor=3343 http://alltransistors.com/transistor.php?transistor=44904 PN3565 Equivalent Transistors (no 2N3565 in that list) and just by finding 2N3904 makes it easy to spot... http://alltransistors.com/crsearch.php?mat=Si&st...

last night i surfed the site and all of his "hard to get transistors" were gone...
he is out of stock on all of them!
question is... has he been that before or is this "the end"?

looks real nice!
but most important... how does it sound