Croft Micro 25 Basic pre amp - advice

[DSJR]

You could keep the Croft pre and get a Croft 7 power amp. That's a good sound.

Dave's suggestion of a passive pre with a professional power amp like the Crown will be a bit more neutral in a 'studio control room' way. It really depends on your own tastes.

He's got Eff BEE 1+ speakers - depends on how the OP likes his bass as to how the otherwise lovely Series 7 will work Transmission Lines have little to no control in the augmented low end, as tightening the bass removes the extra extension - usually Oh yeah, Bryston amps were/are used in PMC's designs...

[Haselsh1]

It may/may not be relevant but I had an Alesis power amp a few years back that I used with a Creek passive and the power amp was only OK if the gain knobs were set to full power. If you reduced the gain with the knobs the sound was massively distorted and unlistenable. It was such a shame because I wanted to buy a second and bridge them giving hundreds of Watts per channel with immense bass control.

[DSJR]

Doesn't happen with the old Crown 'D' series, although I understood that the input impedance varied from 13k to 25k over the gain-pots travel. Doesn't stop me now using a passive preamp to feed them with music (gain controls on power amp set to one o'clock) and getting a great sound for my needs.