Linn Kairn internal battery replacement.

Myron, if you ever find a $300 Kairn with a slimline power supply to be an albatross, email me. I'll relieve you of your burden speedily.

The battery repair will take a dealer around ten minutes, and then he can check out the rest of the preamp. I probably will only cost around half an hour of labor. If the battery is the only thing wrong, you have found an outrageously good deal.

The Kairn phono stage is remarkably good. There is no stand alone phono stage you can buy even on the used market for $300 that will sound nearly as good. The closest is a Dynavector P75 ($600 new, $400 used), which for some tastes is arguably better, but even then many would not agree. Enjoy your journey into vinyl - it is a lot of fun.

Sorry about the power supply problem. But even at $600, you can easily get your money back plus some profit should you decide to sell. One of the nice things about Linn service is that they use a flat rate for most repairs, which is $250 (plus shipping, etc). It doesn't matter if it is a CD 12 (20k USD) they are fixing, it is still only $250. It usually works about to be a very good deal.

"As a second source I'd decided that the cheaper Genki would be a good idea, but a second hand ikemi doesn't seem that much more at 6-800 dollars extra. Is the Ikemi that much of a step up in performance from the genki to make it worth while . ??"

It is absolutely worth the extra money. I have owned both. There is something about the Ikemi (and I'm sure other CD players of its quality), that for me at least, pass a mysterious threshold where digital music becomes truly involving. The Ikemi is already a good deal on the used market, and it should soon be even better. Linn is coming out with a new CD player to replace it in the near future, and after that there should be a lot of Ikemi's for sale. It is too early to say how much the price will drop, but reason says it should.