The paper is concerned with the pole pattern required for a low-pass amplifier which is to have overall feedback. The analysis applies to an amplifier whose gain function contains no internal zeros and with a feedback fraction which is independent of frequency. A general solution is obtained for the case of critical damping which applies to any number of poles. For the maximally-flat case graphical solutions are given for between one and six poles.Later Sections relate to the synthesis of a prescribed pole-pattern. Some inter-stage networks are reviewed, and the method of realizing pole pairs by feedback pairs is introduced.