The Thick Flick is an original op amp design inspired by Flickinger 290-3 mic preamp cards. It can be used in all traditional audio amplifier configurations.
 
The design is very different from most discrete op amps – it uses two differential pairs for the input and voltage amplification stage, followed by an all NPN output stage. The design is simple and elegant. We cleaned it up a bit, selected modern transistors, and adjusted it for unity gain stability – so you can plug it in anywhere! 
 
We really love it as a mic pre. The top end opens up in a really nice way from the beautiful harmonics it generates.