Preamp recommendations up to $2000

I would have thought that "neutrality" was the ideal for a preamp. That is, if possible, the preamp should do as little sonically to the source signal as possible. I'm not sure what's meant by "presence" exactly, or "openness," (no criticism of your vocabulary, by the way--audiophilese is laden with such obscurities) but I would think bass would be better addressed w/ tone controls, room treatments and the like. Ideally, to my way of thinking, the best preamp is the one that exactly matches the sound of the source fed directly into the amp, unless of course you're using the preamp to mollify the perceived deficiencies of something else in your system.

A second vote for the PASS X1 or X2.5 - both are excellent neutral sounding well-built fully balanced Preamps. - with great customer service from PASS as well. Worth checking out...

The Ultra SL hybrid tube/solid state preamp from Audio by Van Alstine is a terrific component regardless of cost, but it does happen to cost less than $2k.

Audio Research LS5 MKIII it's the one componant of mine I've never been tempted to upgrade.