A couple years ago I ran through a series of highly regarded amplifiers. I'm a tube guy so keep that in mind, but I landed on ModWright, in particular their ls100. It's not fully balanced but Dan will put a transformer in it if you want. For me, this preamp is clear without being overly analytical, it's quiet, and it's musical as all hell. The only thing I dont like about it is the remote seems kinda cheap. The music room sells them and they have a pretty generous return policy. There are other models you might like better as well but I've been very impressed by Dan and his products
Reasonably priced preamplifier
At some point in the future, I would like to own a preamplifier from either CH Precision or Soulution but looking at their prices, I do not think that it is going to happen soon. So, until such time, I wanted to ask from experienced users here if there are preamplifiers within 7-8k (used) range that are different from the herd and can provide similar kind of performance that CH or Soulution provides?