Help with finding ultra-transparent pre-amp

I got a new player, Wadia 581i SE, and once I hooked it up directly to amps I realized that my pre-amp is not transparent enough.
To make a long story short, I would like to find a very transparent pre-amp to be inserted between player and amps (no coloration, no shift in tonality, and no loss in dynamics, micro or macro), that would result in a sound indistinguishable from the sound of my player going directly to amps.
Essentially I want a wire with attenuation control. Balanced connectivity is preferred.
I tried a transformers based passive pre-amp (it was a custom, very well executed job), result was not good, not only that it killed dynamics and resulted in a dull and uninteresting sound, but transparency was in fact worse in comparison with my present pre-amp.
Is there such a transparent pre-amp, or it is just a pipe dream?
The cost is of course to be considered, I would not go for anything that is more than let’s say 3.5K, new or used.
I have been reading about Placette (resistor based), has anyone had any experience using it in a system that has very resolving front end?
The rest of my system:
Bryston BP26 pre-amp
Bryston 7B SST amps
PMC IB2 speakers