Need help picking my first tube amp

I had the Xiangsheng 728A preamp, a Chinese product. Once I worked through a couple of quality control issues, it was a workable tube amp. I didn't notice glaring defects in the sound, nor did I hear any notable excellence from it.

I went to a Van Alstine Transcendence RB 10 tube preamp, around $1000. By comparison, the sound is accurate yet not oversharp like some solid state preamps. All in all, a delight to listen with.

Watch from of Thomas and Stereo reviews - he does a great job and most of his offshore amps are below $1k.

Chinese tube amps are good. Many mainstream manufactures like PrimaLuna are made in China. No worries. I'll look for a basic push-pull EL34 tube integrated that is hard wired because the circuit design is simple and repairs are as well down the road.

Yeah I actually watch his reviews he's very good and I've been looking at some of those amps but I need to have a headphone jack too.

I have a Yaqin mc 13s with gold lion tubes I don't currently use. I have had it for several years and have enjoyed it toughly. No headphone jack though.

My advice would be choose your speaker matching well. 8 ohm , high efficiency speakers will sound the best. In your price range, you will be underwhelmed with tubes + <4 ohm 84db speakers. I matched the Yaqin to a pair of ELAC Uni-Fi bookshelf's at first and it was meh. Built some DIY high efficiency speakers and it was magic.