Tried tubes and LOVED it, now what?

Have it modded by someone who really knows their stuff.

I took a look at the circuitry of the unit and the design is nicely simple with no real circuit boards.

A prime candidate for easily noticeable qualitative upgrades. Ie, where the work done ---is easily heard.

Mods done? maybe $400 tops.

Upgrade? selling hassle and spend twice the money for little change upward and probably a notable amount of lateral shifting.

I enjoyed a Jolida 502P for years with a very substantial dual mono balanced blah blah preamp (Kavent S-33 Vincent clone), and those were great together (I've been tube guitar amp user for 5 decades). I started learning more about "single ended" tube amps (one of my newer "boutique" guitar amps is single ended) and happened upon a slightly used Dennis Had Firebottle SEP HO (High Output single ended pentode) on Ebay. A relatively low power amp does limit you to higher sensitivity speakers, so there's that, but my Klipsch Heresy IIIs are 99db so this rig can kick it. I also bought a new Schiit Freya so it's all tubular around here, and I've never looked back...the sound my gear pile is now astonishingly well sorted.

First off congrats on finding the light......I'm not a fan of KT88's,great bass but the mids are no where near as lit up as EL34...You could:
Consolidate all speakers to 1 pair of Hi Eff.& go 300B SET or something S.E.Triode Strapped or 300B Push Pull...
 Consolidate all speakers to 1 REALLY good pair & try some tube rolling,especially the small signal tubes along with some cable rolling...
 Stick with what you have & try tube/cable rolling...
Is the room treated?You will be surprised how much an untreated room affects the tone...Good luck...

@freediver the kt88 tubes were replaced with el-34s by seller and I liked the result. My room is (overly) treated with acoustics foams and panels. Ive been having fun playing with diff power cords and ICs but so affraid on trying diff tubes, bias, rolling etc. I don’t mind keeping the amp for a bit longer.
@teo_audio   Who is here familiar with modding the cayin A88-T will h great result?

@nasaman I’m glad to hear you found more happiness with tubes.

The Cayin A88T was a very good product, and Steve imported a lot of them. You can certainly do better, but you have to work a bit to ensure you don't just make a sideways move.

I agree with @freediver in that outside of output power on paper, the EL34 outclasses the bigger tubes, sonically.

For me, it’s easier to stick with an integrated tube amplifier, and an obviously more compact solution. I’d suggest finding an Air Tight ATM1, Jadis DA60 or DA88S, or VAC Auricle. While Air Tight calls the ATM1 a power amplifier, its level controls allow you to use it as an integrated provided you don’t mind switching cables to change from one source to another. The Jadis models sound about as good as you can find out there, and also allow you the flexibility to dial in the best sound for you by running ANY EL34 / 6CA7 / KT77 / 6550 / KT88 and maybe even the bigger tubes by simple plug and play. Finally, the VAC Auricle can come with a decent phono stage if you do analog, and don’t have a better external. I predict while you’ll need to have a bit of patience to find one of these, as they come up for sale less often than some other products, you’ll find any of these allow you to easily hear that you took a few steps up the ladder