Preamp suggestions

Thank you all for your suggestions and ideas. It makes sense to go with a passive preamp and I do like the concept of the Schiit with a tube to add a bit of "Colour".  I would however like to have a built-in phono section and the ability to manually adjust with tone controls.  I would prefer to buy an American or Canadian product and would pay up to $500.  Im not opposed to a lightly used unit either.  Thank you again!  

You can get all that you want, but it is going to push your budget a bit:

1)  Schiit Saga (original on closeout) $299 (you get the option of passive or tubed with the Saga).
2)  Schiit Mani Phono Preamp- $129
3)  Schiit Loki EQ/Tone Control-$149

This gets you all American designed and manufactured products with a warranty.  You can also go in steps as your budget allows and/or wait for the Mani/Loki to come up on B stock for slightly cheaper.  The downside is that the Loki will have to go in between the preamp and amp to work with all sources (which theoretically can degrade sound quality), but it has a full bypass switch so can be switched out of the circuit. 

The alternative is going to be to start searching on the used market for something that has all of the foregoing in a single box, but it is going to be very hard to find.  Perhaps an older Parasound.  An older McIntosh preamp would tick all of your boxes, except the budget, and I expect it would significantly exceed it.  

Do leave some money for decent interconnects and speaker cables.  By that, I don't mean $500 cables, but something like Blue Jeans, which are made in the US, good quality, and will hold up over time.  (Worlds Best Cables on Amazon sells RCA cables made with Canare L-4E6S wire for $21.95 a pair and you could purchase raw Belden or Canare speaker cable from Blue Jeans for 70 cents to $1.50 per foot (I believe all Carnare and Belden cable is US made).  I only harp on this, as I had a speaker I thought was failing that I traced down to a bad solder connection in a speaker cable that degraded over time.  

Yes mcreyn got the money shot icarus12 , didn't see that closeout sale on the original Saga which is tube /or passive and remote for $100 less.  https://www.schiit.com/products/saga

Cheers George

Schiit also sells short interconnects for their products, $20/pair. I have used Blue Jean LC-1, with my passive SYS which are very low capacitance cable than can be made to any length. 

mecryn, Canare is Japanese. They make great commercial cable. I use DA 206 for all my AES/EBU cables and for all my long low level signal cable. They also make the best RCAs you can buy. Indestructible!