OK it never ocurred to me that this may be a fake transistor... It is possible...

If I acquire a 2N4401 from a reliable source, ¿will it have higher gain? ¿Does it work in one of your simulations?

 

My simulation in post #5 shows that a real and modern 2N4401 transistor works perfectly.

 

Why ask for the emitter voltage when he told you the voltage across the 68k collector resistor was 8.9V - 7.3V= 1.6V so the collector-emitter current is 1.6v/68k= 23.5uA and the voltage at the emitter will be a little more than 23.5uA x 470= 11.1mV.

One problem is that he is using an old low hFE 2N4001 transistor when the circuit was probably made for the modern high hFE 2N3904 that the schematic shows. Therefore the voltage across his 470 ohm emitter resistor is correct at about 6.67mV.

With the 2N3904 transistor, the input impedance is 30k ohms which is much too low for a guitar pickup that usually feeds the 1M ohms input of a vacuum tube.

Google is full of "distortion pedal" circuits made by amateurs who do not know the details of audio electronics.
Here is a similar circuit but without the emitter resistor and it has diodes to cause the distortion:

I doubt very much that it is a tube type amplifier. AND we have fed tube amplifiers very well with low impedance dynamic microphones, without input transformers, as well as with low impedance magnetic guitar pickups..
I asked for the voltage across the emitter resistor BOTH to verify the current AND to verify the resistor value. Perhaps you have never come across a resistor whose value did not match the color code. It does happen in the real world.

 

I doubt very much that it is a tube type amplifier.

He posted a link to a similar amplifier made by the same company that has an input impedance of 470k which is almost the same as the 1M of a vacuum tube guitar amplifier.

I asked for the voltage across the emitter resistor BOTH to verify the current AND to verify the resistor value. Perhaps you have never come across a resistor whose value did not match the color code. It does happen in the real world.

I don't buy cheap Chinese resistors from ebay. But yeah, its value might be wrong.
The collector voltage shows that the transistor is conducting some current and it should work.