Neutral preamps

First Sound preamps are wonderful. You owe it to yourself to demo one.

Bryston BP-20 and BP-25 (same as 20 but with a remote) are very neutral.

I agree that First Sound preamps are wonderful. But if you truly want neutral, you must listen to a Placette (the active version is best). I own both of these products and can't choose between them.

The most nuetral Amp I have had is the Morrison ELAD. Unfortunately, I learned that I preferred a tube preamp that colors the sound a bit. The problem with pure neutral sound is that you ultimately get the sound quality of the recording. And there's a lot of crappy engineering sound out there. A tube preamp imparts some warmth to everything and in my opinion is easier to live with. You can also change sound based on tube swapping. Something you can't do to a SS Preamp.

The Lamm L2 is as neutral as I've heard in an active preamp--having 40 feet of interconnect to my active crossovers rules out passives in my system. I'm in the same camp as Sibelius on this with my preference leaning to my Jadis, for many of the reasons listed in the post above, but I must admit the Lamm is tempting, even though it's virtually solid-state (one tube, in the power supply), as it does possess many of the virtues of all-tube designs in dimensionality, naturalness of sound and truth of timbre; just lacks the bloom you get from the Jadis.