I had wanted to own this baby since I obtained a Lloyd's casette deck from an uncles estate but found the $4600 MSRP a bit overwhelming. Throwing caution to the wind, and my kid's college education, I cashed in my $5K whole life policy and drove to Mort's in Queens. Turns out he had never sold this particular model, still hard to imagine why, so it was a buyer's market. I got him down to two grand and he went for it. Anyways, I got it home, hooked it up to my Lloyds and holy mother of pearl...the soundstage, the liquidity, the bloom...the urine running down my leg...all and more, made me finally understand what it must be like to be one of those really smart Stereophile guys who get to audition all that free expensive equipment, except of course I had to fork over the $2K for this puppy. Anyway long story short, I found scratches all over the case where some previous owner had obviously missed the jack, probably in the dark. Anyways, I took it back to Mort's and he graciously gave me a store credit less a 25% restocking charge; wow that was a close call. Anyways, I used part of my store credit and bought a Tice Clock and some things called Mpingo discs. Holy harmonics batman, my Lloyds cassette deck has never sounded better...but I sure miss that little headphone amp, scratches or no scratches.