Best Preamp under 10K

Try the Musical Design SP-2B. It costs $1000. and sounds wonderful. Take the balance of the $10,000. and buy a good front- end or speakers. This unit isn't as well known, but it definately will embarass many units costing much more. Good luck. Musical Design PH.# 636-447-0400.

Lamm LL2 Better than classe Audio research and levinson body dynamics and real harmonic accuracy!! and plenty of bass punch great for digital front ends!

General Electric mono phono $12.95! Circa 1957. Single 6sc7. Beats any phono up to $65,000!

First Sound, lots of quality and extreme performance for the money. I would put MKIII (current entry level-retail $5400) against any pre-amp up to $10K.

Another factor is the synergy of the other components in your system.

A lot of good recommendations in this thread. My short list is VAC Renaissance and Ayre K-1xe. Others that I am intrigued by:

Burmester 035 (or 011)
Hovland HP 200
Conrad Johnson ET-5
VTL TL-6.5
Wyetech Opal

The Hovland, CJ, and Wyetech do not have balanced outputs so I am more reluctant to pursue those...