Need a preamp with tone controls!

I found somewhere you have B&W Matrix 802 which should be absolutely fine unless you have a very undamped room or the speaker has developed a problem - is the tweeter Ferrofluid dried out or could a driver be damaged and distorting?

Yes, I have the 802s, all drivers are in great shape. I bought the Parasound Halo A21 under many recommendations. Very happy with it! Currently using an NAD integrated amp for the preamp. It has tone controls, is probably the last item stopping total sound refinement. I agree that 70s and 80s music is the golden age...at least for me. Thus the desire for tone controls to correct room acoustics and poor recordings. The Parasound J2 would be my first choice if it had tone controls. I am looking for that level of quality, but used from Agon/ebay, or store demo pricing. I haven't seen tone controls on Vincents either, which model/s? Classe CP800 also has them but I'm not very fond of how those look...too retro-futuristic, allhough great performance and quality. I like the idea of trying a tube preamp to soften, a bit, the sound of my entirely solid state system.

McIntosh has bass and treble controls as well as override.

+ to the Luxman preamps thier ( most of the good ones) tone controls have cut off freq as well so you can tailor the frequency you want to cut or boost leaving the rest alone.