You're right. Very few manufacturers are making warm sounding gear today. It seems the trend is to make everything forward sounding.Mike at Jolida designs his amps to 'tame' the forward sounding speakers we all find on todays market. His transformer designs are excellent. Wide ultra-bandwidth with minimal saturation (Mike is actually a metalurgist speciallizing in transformer design by trade). Mike has hand chosen parts that give his amps a warmer presentation. You won't find any boutique parts inside.
Another warm sounding pre that I've run across is the MAD (Mapletree Audio Design) Ultra 4M. The original design (not the updated version) was a very warm preamp. Mated to a detailed piece of gear, this preamp does a nice job of 'taming' the sound.
Heres a couple of links to article I wrote about both pieces of gear.
Jolida JD1000
http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/viewpoint/1004/joeaudiophile2.htm
MAD Ultra 4M
http://www.tnt-audio.com/ampli/mad4multra_e.html
(sorry, I tried to embed the links but it didn't work. you'll have to copy and paste then into your browser)
These sound like what you may be looking for.
Regards
Scott F.