phono preamp with volume?

"Adds a lot to the music" is an exact description of my feelings about tubes.

I have been using my Blue Circle 707 with an Audio Synthesis passive preamp and it works fine. Line stages have their pluses and minuses but you will get a higher level of performance cheaper with passive IF THE REST OF YOUR SYSTEM IS COMPATIBLE WITH IT. It helps to have an amp with reasonably high sensitivity and check the impedance of the units and keep the cables short. The Creek 22 passive is about $500 and it will compete with active preamps 10x the price in a system compatible with it.

My judgement on tubes was arrived at by comparing my two tube preamps and my transistor one with my two passive preamps. The transistor lacks the "depth" of the tube units but is closer to the passive. The first time I heard a transistor amp in Nov. 1963 the first thing I noticed was that the notes seemed to be more separate than my Dynaco MK 4. A recent review of the Creek passive noted something similar. At first the reviewer thought the passive lacked something an expensive tube preamp had but he finally concluded that the tube was filling up the space between the notes. This is exactly what I hear, but we all hear differently.