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 The mini-booster is one of the most used pedals I've ever built. It's a popular build in the effects community and everyone seems to love it. I know I do. Even the Fulltone Fat Boost was based on this design, but this circuit was originally created by Jack Orman as an adaptation of a circuit from National Semiconductor's app-note AN-32.
Some people would say that it is not a transparent boost because it adds a bit of sparkle to the high frequencies... This is true... It may not be "transparent" but it does retain the sound of your instrument or whatever you put in front of it. Transparent or not, it's a damn good sounding gain stage. When people play my gear at the jam they always love this one.
I like to kick on a boost when I play a solo... until I built my green/red boost my mini-booster was the holy grail for my guitar solos because it allowed me to keep my guitar volume all the way open for rhythm. This was on the end of my pedal board for 3 years. Why have the guitar volume all the way up you ask? With some fx and amps it is desired to clean up the signal from the guitars volume knob, but for me, being the only guitarist with just drums, bass and vocals, I need a fat rhythm tone almost all of the time. Turning the guitar volume down cuts the input singal to my fx/amp and definitely thins out the sound of a distortion or overdrive. I tried the design with the gain control like the fat boost has but for me it just got in the way on stage... Eventually I cut it out and moved the circuit to the pink duct tape box. I used j201 transistors for a while but eventually switched to mpf102s because they have less gain and they sounded cleaner to me.
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