Hi Alex,……. Well, I’m the same age as you except that the numerals are in a different order! 
Yes, I think that one is a ‘brick’….. they are very good, and yes, they do have the effect of pulling the voice forward and yet keeping it clean and fresh sounding.
There were only about 50 ‘bricks’ made, and they did vary quite a lot, as I was experimenting with the design, but basically they were just very accurate mic amps with transformer inputs and with amplifiers that had a huge overload margin. The compressor was very simple, but the best thing was the ‘enhancer’ which worked like a dream.
The P110 is the successor to the ‘brick’ and it does sound just as good.
It’s unlikely that you will find a ‘brick’ at a price less than about £600; they are very rare as engineers tend to hang on to them!
But don’t get fixated about it! The most important thing is the voice you are recording, not the gear.