Music First Audio Passive Magnetic Preamplifiers?

Some of us joked that Music First should be renamed as "Money First".;)

I second Clio9's recommendation of the Lightspeed Attenuator which is a real steal new ($450), not sure what the one up for sale cost. I have used the following passives Placette RVC (and "Active"), BENT TAP-X autoformers, Goldpoint, Music Reference PiaB, and K&K TVC with S&B mkIII transformers. The Lightspeed is as good as any passive I have used in my system and it just possible I might keep this as one of my preamps till it stops working 50 years from now. Single-ended, and one input only (part of the reason it sounds so good?). Saying that, all of these passives will sound very good to excellent with sensitive amps, short ICs, and 100kohm amp input impedance.

Pubul57, could you compare the TAP-X to your Lightspeed preamp? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the two? Thanks.

I got a hold of a Bent TAP-X and planning to get an LDR preamp of my own later.

I think they are very similar in mids and highs, where I find the LS amazing is in the quality of bass and dynamics - not that the BENT is a slouch, but I wasn't expecting it from a resistor based passive which needs more careful system matching than the TVC. If the quality of the attenuator is of extreme importance, not sure how you can get better than no contact (light) control of resistive values and related attenuation of a signal. Clio9 is far more articulate than I and has done more A/B listening to passive, my listening has been sequential so my comments are more impressions based on memory. Clio9 has done much more heads up comparisons. I can only say I love the Lightspeed in my system and I never quite felt that way with previous passives - though I certainly though they were very, very good and exceptional value compared with actives of anywhere similar quality. I would like to hear a LS attenuation control within my active tube preamps (Joule and Atma-sphere) - it would interesting hear this purist of attenuators to control volume within an active environment.

What the Lightspeed showed me that no other resistor designed passive showed me was that a transformer designed passive (Pubul57 bought the K&K from me) can actually compress the sound a bit, especially in the highs. To me this is not problematic and actually contributes to a slightly warmer and pleasing sound. However, it means that a TVC is not necessarily the last word in transparency and neutrality.

Now autoformers are not transformers since they have just a single winding. However, there is some debate among people I trust who make transformers for a living as to whether the Slagle designs are actually autoformers. I won't get into specifics on that discussion here. However, in my comparison of the Lightspeed and Slagle AVC I own, the AVC acted and sounded like my old K&K S&B, just more transparent and neutral, but not as transparent and neutral as the Lightspeed.

The Lightspeed is the king of the hill of passives IMO. If you have a system that matches up well with it you will be extremely surprised at how good it sounds.