Straight wire and gain linestage?

I had a Placette Passive Linestage for a few years. The transparency is wonderful. No signature at all!! Can be had as rack mount or stand alone, with remote(power supply for remote in separate enclosure). All Vishay resistors. (http://www.placetteaudio.com/) There are four Placettes listed on this site, but all are sold or sale pending. Sometimes the company has loaners(that's how I bought mine originally).

OOPS- You wanted it with gain? I don't think you'll ever find the Placette Active Linestage for under a $1000.00(or $2k for that matter).

Do you need gain from your pre, or is a passive an option for you?

I probably need some gain. The output impedence is high on my CD player and input impedence low on amp. I also need a fair amt of input impedence on linestage. I've got an old preamp on the system right now with 33 K ohm input impedence. Seems to be enough. 12k is not enough. I just ran into Monolithic Sound PA-1. Has anyone heard it?

I think you may be able to work with a Passive Transformer Volume Control [TVC] in terms of impedance matching, and some have 6db of gain. That will be as close as you can get to straight wire with gain.

Bob, Did you mean LEAD? Lynne

The units from Promethius seem to be in the price range; their top of the line mono-dual box units are about $1100.

Hi, Pubul. I found your thread where you talked about the K & K. I found the Prommitheus. It's probably what I should get. I thought I should check out gain stages first. I'm sort of a doubter now on the passives. But the tvc might work. Lynne ( I found the ELAD. There is also a Lead.)

Arnettpartners, I'm not sure a TVC will work for you, but I am positive it will be far better than most any other active anywhere near the price - but you do have match the system well, a bit less of an issue with a TVC that other passives. Another issue is input sensitivity of the amp and the volatage output of the source. In my system all those issues work well, and my passive TVC is one heck of a great pre, competitive [better] with some mighty fine actives I've had in my system from CAT, Lamm, and Joule.

6 decibels of gain would be enough, I'm sure. I've got Rothwell attenuators on the amp right now. It's a goal to get rid of those eventually, but I've got four of them on the 4 channel amp because in the interum I refoamed my AR 9's and have them biamped. 4 EVS attenuators are about $1k, and then I have no selector switch. Endler is cheaper but he's buried in backorders. But the Rothwells are dull. Thanks for advice. Lynne

OK. I don't know how to predict the outcome of those issues. I'll probably have to try one. Thanks. Lynne

conrad-johnson 10BL?

Sorry, Bob. I wasn't making a joke. I'm dyslexic and I thought, maybe he's dyslexic too. I found a Lead preamp with Russian tubes in the volume control, which I thought was funny. They were guarranteed for 90 days. But then I found the ELAD. It looks very interesting. I like that it has not much gain--6 db, I think. Thanks. Lynne

Endler Audio has a generous return policy, although he seems to be set on a single resistor value which can't be right for all systems, but he's the engineer and I am not. Certainly worth a try; the price is quite reasonable and he has some cool options. I am neither customer nor user but passives can work well in the right set up. I still my miss my tube-buffered line driver. FWIW, two of current systems run 6 dB gain, just right for 2V sources.

Endler Audio has a generous return policy, although he seems to be set on a single resistor value which can't be right for all systems, but he's the engineer and I am not. Certainly worth a try; the price is quite reasonable and he has some cool options. I am neither customer nor user but passives can work well in the right set up. I still my miss my tube-buffered line driver. FWIW, two of current systems run 6 dB gain, just right for 2V sources.