Passive, Balanced, Remote Pre?

Hi all..

I've heard the Placette pre is a wonderful product, but its cost when balanced is simply too high for me. Can anyone else recommend a balanced passive preamp (with remote) which will screw with the sound as little as possible? Mainly, I just want to manage volume levels on my Stax amp, and don't want to lose my balanced advantaged (Balanced DAC, AMP, cables to phones..etc)

-Adam