Inexpensive Tube Pre?

I owned a Jolida Envoy Preamp and it has a sweet, lush tube sound. The linestage has 12ax7s and the phonostage uses 12at7s. I did not like the phono sound at all...grainy and not very dynamic. CDs thru the linestage had a very musical presentation, although I would not call it quiet preamp. It might be the high gain tubes that cause this. I rolled in some Amperex NOS and the soundstage really opened up.
I would recommend only if the price was right.

If you don't need a phono stage I would recommend a Consonance T1 pre. It uses 12ua7 so you can't use your tubes. It is tube rectified and point to point wired and for the money very good performance. Best

I think Mik971 is referring to the Jolida 5T preamps that list around $350 to $400 here on A'gon. Hmm this is a tough question for me. The CJ gear of yesteryear which many audiophiles is quality made stuff vs the budget Chinese preamps of today that can be pretty decent as well. Very tough. To Mik971 is there a Jolida dealer near you that you could talk to about the Jolida preamp you are looking for? Maybe they will let you do a comparison to the CJ CV3 you have?

Thanks all! I don't have a Jolida dealer in WI suprisingly to demo the 5t pre.. And yes Bdgregory, I did think about the tube amp thang(LOL), that would be the logical choice right? I owned a Scott 222 for a short while but departed with it because of service issues. I figured it would be easy just to pop in pre-amp tubes as opposed to biasing an amp. I don't need a phono stage, so I will look up the Consonance suggestion. Really wish I could demo a Dared also.

Maybe a rebuilt PAS 3 or Van Alstine?