What's your "diminishing returns" preamp choice?

For me, i'd be done once I upgrade to a Vitus SL-102 preamp which is as good as I could ever need or want for my tastes. The nice thing about this preamp is it is modular in construction & is able to be upgraded in the field as new modules become available. Obviously not cheap, though that would likely be my last preamp (accepting upgrades over time).

It took a $2000+ preamp (Musical Fidelity kW) to give me what I felt combined the best aspects of the passive (detail) and active (bass impact, dynamics, oomph) preamps I'd tried previously. Prior to that preamp, there were more tradeoffs that had to be made in my consideration.

Both! You can't see the forest through the trees?

These are both in reference to a source with a weak tube output stage, geeeeish!!

And don't even come into play if the source has a good low solid state output impedance.

I can see forests pretty well and also am pretty good at contradictions. Since you did write both statements I accept that you believe both of them but just so you know, if that is true it is also true that you are contradicting yourself.

Perhaps it would help if you defined what is meant by a 'weak tube output stage' (since tubes can easily drive headphones if set up properly; we can do it with our UV-1 preamp) and also what you mean by a 'good low solid state output impedance' as clearly Oppo, Wadia, dcS and others apparently do not qualify. I am assuming you mean 'output impedance', perhaps you have some numbers?

I use an "old and no longer available" Kavent S-33 dual mono balanced preamp which is the same damn thing as a Vincent SA-91 (even says that on a circuit board) but re-branded for reasons I don't remember…it sounds amazing (has an isolated dual mono power supply in it's own 3rd of the case) and will stay in my system until it dies and I can't find anybody to fix it, because it likely has zero re-sale value anyway. I could find a different sounding preamp, or a tube preamp, but a better sounding preamp? Doubtful, but I don't seem to care anyway…I do use a tube power amp with it and somehow this combo does the job (also a SS REL sub driven by the tube amp…is that cheating?)

Whatever Ralph, believe what you want.