Best Sounding Passive Preamp

Look for an EVS(Electronic Visionary Systems)passive produced by Rick Schultz some years back. It retailed for around $450 new and it's about as clean and transparent as you're going to get.

I owned it, a couple Reference Line models, and an old McCormack or was it Mod Squad back then? At any rate the EVS used a pair of stepped attenuators for gain and balance and had a "straight thru" mode where the only thing in the signal path was a couple RCA's coming and going, a very short piece of wire and one or two resistors. Can't get much simpler than that. It was by far the best sounding passive I've heard.

Lightspeed Attenuator - do a little homework. You won't regret it.

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=80194&perpage=25&pagenumber=1

Bent Audio and Placette make two of the best at reasonable cost.

I have owned a few passives: Bent AVC, K&K with S&B102, Placette RVC, and Goldpoint. All were bettered by the Lightspeed Attenuator - but all were first-rate and the tranformer and autoformer units are much easier to match with amps and cables. I also hear the First Watt B1 at RMAF and the system sounded quite good, but not my system or room so that is just a tentative observation; but how many things by Nelson Pass don't sound good?

For me it is the McCormack TLC-1 stock or Deluxe. To me they look and sound great. I especially like the feel of the controls of either preamp.