Here's a printed circuit board for building "Aunt Corey's Homemade Buffered Passive Preamplifier". This is for the PCB ONLY and no other components.
If you click on the link above, you can read all about the design which first appeared in Stereophile magazine back in 1991.The BUF-03's have been discontinued by Analog Devices for some time now, which is probably the reason why this design has been kind of lost in the shuffle.
The good news is several Asian sellers on Ebay are now selling the BUF-03's, so its availability is no longer an issue. Please note that this design does not provide any gain or amplification of the audio signal...thus the "passive" in the title. So if your system requires a gain of more than 1 or you listen to things at near "ear bleeding" levels, this design may not be for you. The 2V output of most devices(CD players, tuners, etc.) is usually more than enough to drive most power amplifiers to quite loud levels. Having built numerous buffers/preamps using both transistors and op-amps, I feel that this design is the closest thing I've heard to a simple passive preamp without all the impedance issues that come with passive designs.
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