Hello, I have had the D-30 and heard the Mercury. I now have the Kora Galaxy and will soon have the Eclipse pre-amp after I meet with a guy selling one tomorrow. The Design 30 sounds best between the two of them in mine and a friends opinion. It has a little bit more of a retro look too. The amp provides a powerful 30wpc and is very reliable. Be careful if you have one shipped as the original packing is pretty sad. In between the integrateds and the current Kora I have I used older DR series Classe'(sweet!), BAT VK-60/VK-40 combo, ARC LS-22/Music Ref. RM-9 combo and a few others and still feel that the Kora has a sweeter sound. All the Kora stuff is being offered at incredible bargains due to the distributor shake-up last year. Buy it cheap while you can. Sorry..I have gobbed off way to much here. Buy the D-30 unless you like the looks of the Merc better and the remote option. They both use cheap tubes (el-34 and el-84). You will want to start searching for 12AT7's for tube rolling with both.
