Straight wire and gain linestage?

I had a Placette Passive Linestage for a few years. The transparency is wonderful. No signature at all!! Can be had as rack mount or stand alone, with remote(power supply for remote in separate enclosure). All Vishay resistors. (http://www.placetteaudio.com/) There are four Placettes listed on this site, but all are sold or sale pending. Sometimes the company has loaners(that's how I bought mine originally).

Do you need gain from your pre, or is a passive an option for you?

OOPS- You wanted it with gain? I don't think you'll ever find the Placette Active Linestage for under a $1000.00(or $2k for that matter).

I probably need some gain. The output impedence is high on my CD player and input impedence low on amp. I also need a fair amt of input impedence on linestage. I've got an old preamp on the system right now with 33 K ohm input impedence. Seems to be enough. 12k is not enough. I just ran into Monolithic Sound PA-1. Has anyone heard it?

I think you may be able to work with a Passive Transformer Volume Control [TVC] in terms of impedance matching, and some have 6db of gain. That will be as close as you can get to straight wire with gain.