Best Sounding Passive Preamp

I have both the TLC-1 and the Lightspeed. The McCormack is maximally convenient and very good sounding. The Lightspeed is maximally inconvenient but practically unbeatable sounding. Both are around the same price, i.e. cheap, so there are some very cost effective passives out there.

I bought the Axiom from Luminous Audio when my pre went to the shop..and thought I was buying a cheap POS to fill in...wow..was I surprised. It made me realize passive is worth a second look.

Scp, try the Lightspeed Attenuator - not much money either, I think you will like it since you must have a passive friendly system.

I bought 20 kits of parts from luminous after trying their pre-amp. Used with a Naim NAP250 & AVI Monoblocks.
Inside there are just two Caddock resistors & one 10K Noble Pot. The resistors are 2k87 ohms. The rest is a box, wire & 4 phono plugs. ( Must use Caddocks for best sound, we tried all the others, as was the case with the Noble pot)
Cost to buil DIY is about £20 max. Only suitable for line level, CD etc. Just perfect, clear, deep bass but controlled & beats active pre-amps if driving direct from a CD.

Deradave, try buying or building an LSA DIY - no pot better than no pot. Not the killer value of your DIY, but I think you will find even better performance if you can believe it.

I notice the consensus in the Agon chattering class is the TVC/AVC "kill" resitor based passives. Not my eperience, but I do wonder what a TVC/AVC would be the better approach, there obvioulsy some systems that would be better served by some impedance matching provided by them.