The Rega EAR manual suggests that INPUT and LINK are paralleled, only with LINK being switchable via the mute button. Perhaps this is why they decided to call it LINK rather than OUTPUT.
"In the standalone mode (METHOD 2) where the ear is not required to feed a signal to another amplifier, the LINK sockets can be used as an input, this means it is possible to mute the EAR headphone signal by using the mute control on the front of the EAR."
I think that it is going to come down to the use of -10dB inline attenuators if
@wezzywest is to have any useable range on the EAR volume pot (that is, at least when used with his Exposure 3010S2 and current headphones).