Well that is a mis-read thread if I ever heard one. It is funny how writing these things you have to remmember the other guy isn't there in front of you. What I meant to say as verses what came out is Linn uses op-amps in all their electronics and I for one would have to say that they are pretty successful at making them sound darn good( especially for the $4k amps and $3k pre-amps. Sheesh, how much can an op-amp cost.) You know I will never critisize any device unless I personally have lived with it. I have a little old phono-amp built with battery power and Signetics 5534's that still to this day sounds real sweet. One of the engineers from Fairchild when it was still on Long Island belonged to the audio society and he whipped it up for all of us. In fact for anyone interested I still have the schematic. It runs on 12v dc per side and is dirt cheap to build. I still fire it up occasionally for kicks. Some built them into the table itself. But hey; whatever works and sounds good is good by me.