best preamps

I don't have THAT many $k's (for the purposes of this conversation anyway...don't wanna trigger an audit)...remember the aforementioned Santa Cruz? Cocobolo my sneakers away. And it has to be pointed out often that it's way more fun to find relatively inexpensive great sounding stuff than arbitrarily emptying your pockets in the direction of an Audio Salon "Professional." 

Jeff Rowland Consonance / We can close this discussion now :-) 

Except that the Jeff Rowland sounds horrible in MY ROOM.

Like I wrote earlier, get a bunch of them and try them in YOUR ROOM, which, as everyone knows, is the most important determiner of how anything "sounds."

Why is this so hard to get across??

It is a great preamp but was also sarcasm richopp, lighten up. 

richopp,
I have a Jeff Rowland Corus preamp. I keep reading their preamps sound bad. I’ve compared it to a couple preamps and prefer the Corus. I’m always open to improving my sound, but I need a preamp with HT bypass, specifications that will work with my Jeff Rowland 625 S2 amp, and be at or below the price of the Corus($16K).