Best Preamp under $5k??

My vote is for either an arc ls25 or bat vk30se.

madnut (fascinating screen name--are you a long-time reader of ae newman?): i'd be interested in learning the basis of your contention that $5k is the "value/price" point of all audio gear other than speakers. is this a guess or an experiential observation? BTW, to make this fair, i think you should know that my experience does not support your view.

Corfedboy--I suppose the price of inflection is really relative. For the 95% of the audiophiles, perhaps $5k is the price/performance value point. Of course I cannot speak for others, this is just my observation with no hard data to prove. With my limited experience (I've only heard gear costing up to $20k), I've found that under $5k I can hear major differences between gears. With gears above $5k, most of the time there are definite improvements, but these improvements are not really "cost justified" from my perspective for the performance gain...by the way what do you recommend as the best preamp under 5K corfedboy?

My vote is for the Joule-Electra LA-100 Mk III linestage, a truly musical reproduction instrument.

i like my melos music director - this listed for $4600 w/o fono, $7400 w/fono. i picked mine up (w/o fono) for $2k used.