Yes often large circuits on a solderless bread board fail because the chances of it not making electrical contact are higher with each contact you add.
The solution of course is to make it on strip board all soldered up.
I do know what a big muf is, it's a guitar effects peddle, but what exactly circuit you are trying to follow must remain a misery until you tell us. Let's hope its not an instructables project.
Yes that is to be expected, those amplifiers are common emitter transistors and as such they have a voltage gain of 1 ( but a bigger current gain ) so you don't expect them to get any bigger as it passes through the stages.