I bought a Dean Edge Q5 a couple years ago and the preamp burned out on me. Dean won't cover it under warranty so i am wading into the world of after market parts to get my bass working again.

I have 2 EMG-HZ pickups (the HZ35 model) which I know are normally passice, but they cam as part of an active system where each has a volume and a tone knob (4 knobs on the bass body)

I am pretty happy with this setup, and thought I would just replace the preamp and be good to go. Sadly, I took it to some dude who said he could fix it, but he sold me a jack-mounted preamp that will not support both tone circuts and sounds really badly distorted (no clean signal to speak of).

Is there a good preamp to use with the EMG-HZ35 pickups on my 5-string bass, or should I switch to active pickups and get a peramp to go with them?

I am looking for options here, so if anybody has a good idea please let me know.

Most any "active" preamp will work great with two passive pickups. There are many options, don't think that the passiveness of your pickups limits your choices, it does not. If it were me I'd wire it VOL/VOL/TONE/TONE passive like a Les Paul, but my preference doesn't really matter. :) My passive Edge 5 with the EMG-HZ pickups sounded great.

I had a Q5 and selling it was the best thing I ever did for my setup. I didn't like the tone, the feel, and especially the string spacing (it was a little too tight). You probably don't want to hear this but I would suggest getting a new bass altogether. If I had to keep the bass I would go with full active. Those HZs never had the tone I was looking for and the full active EMGs are pretty nice.