True, and they work remarkably well as preamps. Only problem is that they're becoming scarce, at least in THT case, and a lot of people has been burned by onlin

True, and they work remarkably well as preamps. Only problem is that they're becoming scarce, at least in THT case, and a lot of people has been burned by online sellers who sent them relabeled BJTs. To my knowledge, J201 and many 2SK* low noise ones haven't been manufactured for years, most reliable sellers don't have them in stock anymore, and those sold online by generic sellers are almost invariably either relabeled random ones (if lucky) or the 1st thing they had at hand, which often is a BJT, not even a jFET. However, if you don't need lots of gain a decent preamp can be built around the venerable 2N7000. Yes, that's a MOSFET, definitely not aimed at audio, but it's dirt cheap, available everywhere ...and noisy. But if you keep the gain to reasonable levels it works quite well. Here's some info. http://www.muzique.com/schem/mosfet.htm http://www.muzique.com/schem/mosfet.htm (the entire site is worth bookmarking)