arragon 4004 amp?good pre amp-used-400-1000 range.

Classe CP-50/60, Forte F-44 or Threshold FET 10, in no particular order.

One more that I would recommend would be a Klyne preamp. I'm sure the Klyne, Threshold, Classe and Forte would all sound better with your Aragon amp than the Parasound or Vincent would.

Of the follow up replies, I would say that Robr45's Quad 99 is the best of the lot. I would avoid the tube preamp reco's, and believe me, I love tubes, owning a tube preamp and amp. However, synergy is very important, and your Aragon has a rather low input impedence of 22Kohms. I know many will speak of a 1:10 preamp:amp input impedence as the minimum, but I would stress that this is the MINIMUM. From my expeiences a 1:50/100 ratio or more is much better, the higher the better. So I would not consider a tube preamp with an output impedence of 1K or more at all.

I also would not consider the Proceed AVP. I have owned many high end Processors back when I was trying to make HT the center of my universe, about 8 years ago or so. I tried many high end models from Proceed, Krell, Classe, etc. While they were great for HT, none could compete sonically on music with a good stereo preamp, like the Classe CP-60, IMHO.

Cheers,
John

If you want tone controls, then it looks like the Quad 99 is your best option.

John

Sean,

I have not looked that deep into the Quad 99, nor have I heard one. I have heard all the preamps that I recommended, and I'm sure they sound much better than the Quad, however, you did mention that you would sacrifice sonic integrity for tone controls, that's when I recommended the Quad. I have heard some inexpensive Quad speakers that sounded pretty decent for the $$$, so I assumed the Quad preamp would also be decent.

Certainly it will not sound as good as Classe, Threshold, Klyne or even Forte, but those preamps don't have tone controls.....which may explain why they sound better.

John

Sean,

You should be fine as far as a possible impedence mismatch goes. I believe the 10:1 ratio is really pushing the limits myself, I would recommend at least 25:1 ratio. However the higher the better, and you're looking at a 67:1 ratio, which should be no issue at all.

Cheers,
John