Thank you for getting back to me. I have built the pnp single transistor version, and multiples of the same circuit with ballast resistors. And it works very well, I'm trying to find similar circuits that use the npn transistor. Most of what I've found are npn transistors on the final output, with a base resistor in some of them or a few schematics with none at all. I know these are poorly regulated now, and probably not worth bothering with. In the circuit in my first post, I just didn't understand why the resistances where so high. Thank you for the explanations on this. I've also been looking for circuits on the LM723 with no more than two transistors, a driver then the final output power transistor. It's a bit more tricky finding npn variants of the linear regulator boost current circuits.