Cheap tube preamps and CD players with tube output stages tend to be fine.
Cheap tube power amps, however, often have reliability problems, and because they use poor output transformers, cannot adequately power low impedence speakers (which is most speakers).
You make it sound like you are putting together a system for your prison cell. If you can up your budget a bit, you can get a respectable used preamp and amp here on Audiogon for +/-$750, small speakers for +/-$500, and a CD player and cabling for +/-$300. If you go much lower than that, you're buying either junk or something so old that you better know how to fix it.
Cheap tube power amps, however, often have reliability problems, and because they use poor output transformers, cannot adequately power low impedence speakers (which is most speakers).
You make it sound like you are putting together a system for your prison cell. If you can up your budget a bit, you can get a respectable used preamp and amp here on Audiogon for +/-$750, small speakers for +/-$500, and a CD player and cabling for +/-$300. If you go much lower than that, you're buying either junk or something so old that you better know how to fix it.