My main preamp for years was a conrad-johnson PV-14L tube preamp. I still feel that it's a good preamp for the money.
I had a conrad-johnson Premier 17LS2 for a few weeks. It had an issue that caused static in one channel, so I returned it. I thought it was nice until I bought my Linear Tube Audio MicroZOTL preamp. The LTA was noticeably better. I got lucky and found a lightly used LTA.