I was in the same boat as you. I did have some experience with different Neve style preamps including BAE, Heritage and AMS Neve, but never at the same time. Thought they all sounded very similar, as I recall - they all created the thick Neveish tone that you’d expect, none stood out to me as being clearly better than the other at the time. I do remember the Heritage sounding a bit more hairy, with the gain cranked, but not in a bad way though.

I recently acquired a pair of Vintech X73s in a trade. Looking inside, they both feature Carnhill transformers on the inputs and output. From what I’ve read, it seems both BAE and AMS/Neve also use Carnhill transformers (though AMS Neve’s Carnhills are branded Marinair).

My Vintech’s, have THAT sound, extremely similar to BAE and AMS/Neve from what I remember, no better, no worse in my opinion. I’m certainly no expert but I assume that a lot of the sound we attribute to the Neve sound is due to these transformers, which may not be what you’d find in a vintage Neve, but at least are made to similar specs.

So based on this, I’d probably recommend a Vintech X73 (though I guess the newer ones use proprietary transformers?), BAE or AMS Neve.