The best passive preamp

Thank you spending all that time with all those topologies, and sharing your experiences over the years. I will give the MLA a listen, I'm sure is uses some very fine transformers, given the provenance:) Ultimately, I think the Lightspeed just fits my some system context to a T, so it might be hard to beat its inherent simplicity in terms of parts (but not so easy in excecution, as you know). I do think the dynamic swing issue is based on simply using a passive in a system that for various reasons simply needs an active to perform its best, and maybe the MLA bridges that gap to in terms of a greater degree of "universality".

The circuit for the MLA was originally designed to be incorporated into an integrated amplifier design, like the 45SE we had at THE SHOW in January. Not everyone has a need for a 1.7 watt flea amp though, so there are several out there being used as stand alone line stages and they work pretty well in that capacity too.

The transformers are tiny and you wouldn't think they would be capable of the task, but they are wound by one of the best there is at this art form.

Do you anticipate Joe will try an AVC/TVC as an alternative to using resistors?

You mean Jack? No, he is happy with his design and an AVC or TVC wouldn't work with it as the attenuator. It has to be a 10k pot, series, or ladder attenuator. When I built my AVC using the Slagle autoformers he was curious about them (for reasons I can't mention), but not enough to make him consider changing his design. Jack could easily whip up a few autoformers though if he had reason too. Plenty of resources to do it.

Sorry, I did mean Jack.