Preamps with HT pass through?

Jeff Rowland Capri.Beautiful piece of work.

PSE-HL1 have ht bypass if you can find one used.

Anything new, in preamps with HT bypass, worth considering coming out at this year's RMAF?

It is just over your budget and it is tube preamp.
Not exactly what you are looking for but definitely worth a look. It has HT by-pass. The unit does not have to be "ON" for this function to work so you save tube life in a long run. It is battery powered preamp - no noise, no power issues. And most importantly, it sound awesome.
Dodd battery powered preamp
Another place that sells it....for a bit less

Mariusz

Anthem's preamps do this - AVM20 - AVM 30 - AVM 50 or Statement D1 take your pick - they do pretty much everything else imaginable too (you can program input routing to a DSP for bass management or just do analog direct without even a tone control in the path - just a Burr Brown op amp). If you are looking for functionality then take a look at those. The only drawback is that the six multichannel inputs are just ordinary RCA and not XLR...the outputs are all XLR though. The key with these preamps is the incredible flexibility they come with - I particularly like the digital controlled voltage - every time you power up it resets the gain to a low value - you can also adjust the input sensitivities for each component - this prevents you blowing something if you switch sources to a device with a high signal level. Specs on the Anthem preamp processors will not outperform a similar priced dedicated two channel preamp but even the channel separation (the worst spec on the entire unit) is a not so shabby 82 db - you can, of course, find better in that department from a Levison but it will cost you a lot more.