Hi,
I saw in a pretty old thread (2009) that you had some experience with soldering the op amps on the input cards for the art mpa gold, and problems with damaging the pcb. I have just gotten myself into a similar situation. The 5532 Op amps were making burst noise, so I tried to replace them with 8 pin sockets and put new ones in. I succeeded, through sheer luck I guess, with one channel, but wound up detaching some of the contact rings on the other channel, which now can only pass a very quiet, extremely clipped signal (which I guess might be due to discharge of capacitance between the socket legs and the traces they are not quite contacting [I don't really know electronics beyond high school physics, but I like to pretend I'm smart]). I was wondering how you managed to resolve the problem you had, assuming it might have been similar.
Thanks a bunch in advance!
Phil