Newbie question

@millercarbon 2500kw!! To paraphrase an old trope,  “it’s the first (couple of thousand) watts that are most important....

A cheap old receiver and 2500 watts of probably cheap pro-amp power. I could not think of a worse marriage of components.

Think about starting with a quality 50 watt integrated amp and then tell us the rest of the story. 

deadhead1000, You must be thinking of the great Robert Harley who famously said, "If the first thousand watts aren’t any good just get ten thousand more."

At some point it might even become obvious watts and receivers are not the way to go. The way they push receivers on budding young audiophiles on a budget, deluding them with the lie that a receiver can ever sound good (let alone great) borders on the criminal.

What you need to know roycerichards, and this is for real now, wire quality matters and separates require more wire and all this quality costs money. Big time money. That you don’t have.

What you want is a good quality integrated amp. Tube or ss, that is up to you. With or without a phono stage that is also up to you. Personally I would go tubes and outboard phono but that is just me and you are not me. No matter what though you want an integrated and NOT a receiver.

Also you do not need hardly any watts. No matter what anyone tells you, 20 is fine, 50 is plenty, and anything more is overkill. That is because being on a budget you are going to have to be smart with your money and the smartest thing you can do is avoid any and all speakers with less than 92dB sensitivity, or even better consider only 95 dB and up.

People hate hearing this. Usually people who screwed up and bought low sensitivity speakers then spent years and thousands trying to find the right amp to drive them. This sets up what psychologists call cognitive dissonance, the inability to accept the fact that you screwed up.

If you think really high end audio requires separates, think again.
https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/8367

Now you know how to avoid screwing up: speakers 92dB or greater sensitivity paired up with a good quality tube, er, integrated amp. If you really need a tuner buy a tuner. If you want a vintage look then a good tube integrated combined with a vintage tuner will be hard to beat.

https://stereonomono.blogspot.com/2015/04/pioneer-tx-9100.html

roycerichards, welcome,
All of the above is good advice and food for thought.
Why buy a vintage receiver and then add a power amp while you can still get new or modern used fine integrateds or even seperates? What are your speakers that demand so much power? Start from there to see exactly what your real needs are and what do you want to achieve. 

G

The most important thing I think you should know is the relationship of power to decibels.

It takes about 10x the power to sound 2x louder.

There's little difference in maximum output between a 120 W and 150W amplifier.

Matching an amp to your speaker based on the speaker's minimum impedance is more important than a few watts of difference in rating.

Best,

Erik