Please Recommend a Low Gain Solid State Amp ARC

You may want to call Calvin at ARC. He might have some practical solutions. I mention in passing that the SP-8 is a bit dated. If you love your amp, may be you should switch out the pre. I am not suggesting that you get rid of the amp and keep the SP-8, but I am mentioning in passing that ARC gear works synergistically well together. If you love the SP-8, consider an ARC amp, even a used one. By the way, have you had ARC go over your SP-8 recently. Old gear oftentimes needs a freshening up, especially the caps. Something to think about.

Bad idea since the preamp will not be stable. It's been designed for a specific feedback and increasing it to lower the gain may bring amp to oscillation.

I had ARC reduce the gain on my SP8 a couple months ago. I was told by the service manager that they do lots of gain reductions on SP8's and their other older preamps. ARC said that reducin gain might lead to a slight loss of transparency, but that it would not be noticeable. ARC also replaced all of the original caps with new Nichicons. One of the caps was indeed faulty.

I bet ARC had to do lots of tweaking of their circuit to reduce the gain. Transparency loss is due to the excessive feedback they have to apply. Their preamps designed to be best with tape or analogue sources.

Yep, I think their preamps were designed with phono and tape in mind, esp. the SP10. I was told that the service tech removed a resistor on the bottom of the board, and they left it hanging so I can re-solder it if I should want full gain again.