Filling individual glyphs with a gradient

There used to be a trick for filling individual characters within a type object with a gradient (at least back in CS5, before my upgrade to CC2017):

1. Create a Point or Area text object, then select it with the selection tool

2. Apply Effect>Path>Outline Object

3. Select an individual glyph with the Type tool

4. Apply a gradient.

With this trick, you could fill each glyph in a string with different gradient colors, angles opacities and so forth. (This is different than adding a new fill to a type object and applying a gradient, which fills the entire object with a single gradient – across the characters.)

In CC2017, the same steps fill the highlighted glyph with a flat black, even though the Color and Gradient panels display a gradient fill. This is the case with GPU on or off.

Can anyone duplicate this? (And does anyone know of an alternative method for filling individual characters with gradients?)

Thanks.