Want To Add a Gain Control

I have a couple dbx 118s and really love the sound of them but without any sort of makeup gain I find them almost un-usable for me. I did a search here and found mention of adding makep gain using the 1176 gain design or something to that effect. Does anyone have any hints, ideas, or experience in this? I'm a bit of a newbie so trying to design something like this myself would be difficult. Is it just a matter of taking the 1176 line amplifier and breadboarding it?

It's got 20dB of Output Gain. How frikking much output can you need?

I must admit I hate these layouts with Threshold and Out-Gain. Isn't the way I think. But they can serve any rational purpose.