Line Stage Preamps that blew you away $2500 Edition

@gochurchgo ....Contact Tim Stinson ( the head honcho over at Luminous ), via the email address on the bottom right of his page. Give him time to get back to you, as he is very busy, along with the goings on with the holiday approaching. Tell him I ( Mrdecibel ) encouraged you to contact him. I might be his biggest fanboy ! I do not get a kickback or commission from him. I have sent to him many folks, based on my experience with my unit. Just to let you know, if you were to change gear and needed an impedance change to the Luminous, it is very reasonable with a reasonable turn around time. BTW, I had a SYS here, and it was bettered by the Luminous entry model. My best !

@mrdecibel  No doubt the SYS isn't in that league, I feel like a passive is saying "this is your system without make up" and I'm not sure I want to know that yet lol. I was trying to find mine and plug it in and see what my pig really looks like with no make up lol.

@gochurchgo Have you checked out Aric Audio?  

Aric Audio...call him! He will happily speak with you and create a bespoke preamp that checks all your boxes.

@gochurchgo 

I recently purchased a Music First Audio TVC passive. I had one custom made to order since I wanted more attenuation steps and no input selection control using the latest version of his Transformers.  I have had  a Django TVC based on the TX102 transformers for 20 years now. It’s been mostly  shelved for the last 8 years or so in favor of active preamps. My latest active preamp cost me $10k as I was determined to get one that would be “stunning” and long lived in my system. 
That lasted 8 months when I swapped it out to try a passive with my new amp. 
While the Django had it faults, some ringing on certain frequencies.. it still managed to sound more natural and bettered my active. So I looked into other passives, autoformers, stepped attenuation and even put my Schiit Freya+ back in the system for its passive mode and buffered stage..  I love the Freya+ for its versatility, but it was still lacking in transparency compared to the Django..  after many conversations with MFA’s Jonathan Billington in England, He offered me a solution that would better my Django in an even more minimalistic way. So I purchased the MFA TVC and have been overjoyed with the results. The TVC handles balanced in and provides SE out to my amp. Matches impedance loads, simply lets the music through and doesn’t color the sound. Everything is more natural sounding, nothing added or rounded off..   Very pleased ! 
My amp only provides 11.5db of gain, So I use the balanced out of my DAC for more voltage out and bypassing the summing of the op amps to SE. Better sound all the way around.. also cost me 1/3 the price of my last active pre.. Passives aren’t for everyone, but with the proper system matching..  they’re unbeatable regardless of the price..  IME..