I have a Luminous Audio axiom. Don't use it a lot but Tim Stinson's little boxes are great examples of "less is more". Available with a remote. However, the base unit like mine is pretty much invisible when it's in the signal path. When you pop the cover, there's nothing there and Tim claims it totally different from 90% of the passives on the market. Something about "volume is adjusted by shunting your amp's input to ground via our volume control to ground and allowing the signal to flow into the amp by a "valve like" circuit". I got no clue what that means but it does work nice.
How do you add remote control to a preamp, here's how.
I purchased a new passive preamp on ebay (made in China) for little over a hundred dollars and.It looks very well built. There is absolutely no gain from input to output. The only thing in the signal path is an Alps volume pot and it is remote controlled. It has four quality inputs and one pair of outputs. I connected my sources to the passive preamp inputs and the pair of outputs to one of the inputs of the non remote preamp. Adjusted the volume halfway on the non-remote preamp. Wella, the remote now controls the volume and input selection via the passive preamp and it sounds marvelous.