Who Offers a Highly Musical Preamp using a 6SN7 tube and a remote?


Compatible with a Pass Labs XA25. 
Must use the 6SN7 tube.
Also a remote.
Budget to $2k and less than 4 years old. 
Anyone done this exercise lately.

Pass specs-
INPUT  Impedance= 47K
GAIN = 20db
  
gadios
Keep in mind really-really good 6SN7 tubes are becoming harder to find, just went through this past few years trying several new, multiple NOS collections, adding a few more NOS. Then, bought some boutique 6SN7s no longer made. If you do go with a 6SN7 based preamp, and must buy new tubes, try the Sophia Electric Blue - not cheap but nice.

Looking around you see a bit of a paradigm shift by some preamp and amp designers now leaning back to 12AU7, 12AT7s for better tube availability.

re: SLP-98*, while It’s well above your price point for a new one, keep any eye out for a good used one. A good friend who bought my prior tube amplifier also demo’d the XA-25 with is SLP-98 and liked it a lot. Has an outboard transformer and decent volume control for a remote preamp. Also, has two sets of pre-outs, kinda rare.

I spoke with Nelson a year ago and he told me personally that he has several customers running the SLP-98 with his XA amps, fwiw.  I won’t give up my 6SN7 based preamp for a long time, but I’ve managed to hoard away multiple quads of NOS and new boutique 6SN7s as backup just in case - the majority of the new re-issue and new limited production 6SN7s just did not cut it for me.  Your results may vary...
larry-forgot to mention- nothing by schitt. I had an unpleasant experience with them. Additionally the noise from the volume control gets on your nerves. 

decooney, bigG and jond,
Those names I will investigate. The Cary SLP05 is one I like
but used they still go at 3,500.

Mod and dehav are both two I want to learn more about.

If I only require 1 or 2 of the 6SN7S I can probably find them  

Thank you all so much for your experience.



Supratek - I think the Chardonnay is priced right around $2000. Seek out the thread entitled "Preamp Deal of the Century". At one time that thread had 26 million hits. I don't think I ever read through each and every of the 70+ pages. But I read enough to persuade me to bite the bullet on a Supratek. 

Wonderful, custom-built, point-to-point wiring, gorgeous. and Lifetime guarantee.
Don Sachs line stage, which I think has a 14-day return period that is nice to have.