Preamp advice

@kunalraiker You wrote $1500 and you’re in Australia. (Been twice, love, love, love your country/people) The above (sage) remark wasn’t sarcastic but I am cynical and given to sarcasm but not on these fora. Try me ;-)‼️No don’t.

Most recommend PRE’s are above $1500 in the currency of your choice. 

lanx0003, First, I apologize for the pedantic tone of my earlier post.  Second, you are quite correct that I neglected to take into account that a transformer can be used to reduce output Z.  I still would not call that a "buffer stage" if only because the term is most commonly used to describe a cathode follower (tube) or emitter follower (solid state). Otherwise, I think we are in agreement.  Thanks for the correction. Definitely my bad.

While we are at it, can anyone think of any preamplifier that uses a transformer output? I cannot.

I would consider the ARC Ref 3, Ref 5SE vs the LS 28 myself.  They are more fully fleshed out sounding to my ears.  As @ghdprentice says the preamp is the soul of a system to me.

OP, absolutely, drop back in model number...time as far as needed to hit your max budget. I had a used Audio Research preamp that I bought in 1979 that I had for nearly twenty years. 

Audio Research!!