Best Sounding Passive Preamp

I have owned a few passives: Bent AVC, K&K with S&B102, Placette RVC, and Goldpoint. All were bettered by the Lightspeed Attenuator - but all were first-rate and the tranformer and autoformer units are much easier to match with amps and cables. I also hear the First Watt B1 at RMAF and the system sounded quite good, but not my system or room so that is just a tentative observation; but how many things by Nelson Pass don't sound good?

At one time, the Reference Line passives were thought to be among the very best, any experience with their gear versus the TVCs and AVCs that have come to market since then?

Oh, one I forgot to mention that was first-rate is the $135 Pot-in-a-Box from Music Reference. On the down side, it is built with a cheap plastic box (though a metal box version is available for 3x the price), on the plus side, the plastic box is non-ferrous, and it has an extremely well made Noble attenuator made many years ago, that isn't made anymore because of the high cost of manufacturing. When you don't need buffering, hard to beat, except for the $450 Lightspeed Attenuator.

Scp, try the Lightspeed Attenuator - not much money either, I think you will like it since you must have a passive friendly system.

Deradave, try buying or building an LSA DIY - no pot better than no pot. Not the killer value of your DIY, but I think you will find even better performance if you can believe it.

I notice the consensus in the Agon chattering class is the TVC/AVC "kill" resitor based passives. Not my eperience, but I do wonder what a TVC/AVC would be the better approach, there obvioulsy some systems that would be better served by some impedance matching provided by them.

BENT was the best of all I tried, till I tried the LSA, but certainly at the pinnacle of passive options, and likely the best TVC (like the AVC even better), plus a lot more flexibility than the LSA which is a little hairshirt, but....

Short ICs with low capacitance (Cardas GR). By the way, Clio9 has started an LSA Forum at his new website for electra-fidelity.com - A good gatheirng place for LSA fanatics to share ideas. I can very easily see someone using the BENT for life and being very, very happy, especially getting off the merry-go-round:). In fact, I might buy one again, I do miss remote and balance control - it certainly would be at the very top of my list for passives to consider, though I'm not sure if John is still selling them; that is not clear to me as it seem he wanted to sell to OEMs.

Doak, have you tried anything with the Slagle autoformer? I noticed I preferred the Slagle AVC (Bent)to the S&B MKII (K&K TVC). Funny that John at BENT switched from S&B to Slagle due to S&Bs actions, but I think it was also made for a better (relative term as both were excellent)sounding piece.

Just a continuing dialogue, OP bought a Ref5.