As we all know that unless you have a very large budget putting together a music system that meets your tastes and expectations involves optimizing the synergies of components. That being said, I find that the Wyred 4 Sound STP-SE with Stage II mods is an excellent preamp which I found to be more neutral and revealing than preamps costing 3X the list price of this unit. It is essentially a buffered passive linestage using a naked Vishay resistor ladder with a very high quality JFET buffer. It has an opamp which kicks in above the zero gain setting and in my opinion produces a small degradation in sound quality. If your amp has 26dB gain and your speakers have a reasonable sensitivity, i.e. 85dB or greater, than IMHO you would have a difficult time doing better for less - particularly if you buy one on the used market. Good luck in your quest.
Need a good preamp w remote
Current system is a McIntosh MC250 upgraded by Terry DeWitt, a modified Acurus RLll, Sony Sacd 5400 ES, Marantz ND8006, Ohm Walsh 2 and Kef R300. Happy with my sound mostly but bad back has me needing a remote contol preamp. Love Mac but not sure I can swing new and with no techs near for 3000 miles probably looking at other brands. Would love tube but ss is ok. Figure $2000 -2500 tops. Thinking Rogue, Parasound, who else? Anyone with this amp have experience in the kind of situation? Thanks for all feedback.