Thank you all so much for your help yesterday. I’ve made a number of design adjustments, and it definitely looks more manageable (at least to me).

I’m hoping to get approx 1 Watt at 8 Ohms out, using a 12v supply. The design is based off of a number of other amps, including the Leak 30, El Cheapo, Z30/50, etc. As I made a few adjustments yesterday, I also realized the topology is becoming closer to a 60s Fender Princeton, though using BJTs.

Stage 1: peaking current/gm-compensated Stage 2: buffer (emitter follower) Stage 3: quasi-complementary output, driven by a unity gain phase splitter