This post is a great vehicle for people to pump their favorite preamps, which is great. However, to actually reach your objectives, you might need a wider view. Two points I'd make:
(1) In my humble experience, you can only get so much of the tube feel out of the preamp part of the equation. It's there, but you get the real tubey bang for your buck out of the power amp part of the equation. So you might consider that budget applied to a tube power amp instead. This is where the real liquid turbiness comes in, I have found. Or consider a full-tube integrated. OR a tube input stage hybrid power amp with a SS output stage. All of those may give you the full tube experience more than a preamp alone.
(2) I don't mean to say that you don't get good tubiness out of a preamp. But if you go this way, save a substantial portion of the budget for the tubes. The hardware is obviously important too, but if you really want to enjoy the whole experience, you'll need some nice new old stock options to play with -- Mullard, Telefunken, the usual suspects, etc. There are some nice options at Upscale Audio, and Kevin Deal may be able to guide you to both hardware and tubes, but your mileage may vary with Kevin.
Good luck!
(1) In my humble experience, you can only get so much of the tube feel out of the preamp part of the equation. It's there, but you get the real tubey bang for your buck out of the power amp part of the equation. So you might consider that budget applied to a tube power amp instead. This is where the real liquid turbiness comes in, I have found. Or consider a full-tube integrated. OR a tube input stage hybrid power amp with a SS output stage. All of those may give you the full tube experience more than a preamp alone.
(2) I don't mean to say that you don't get good tubiness out of a preamp. But if you go this way, save a substantial portion of the budget for the tubes. The hardware is obviously important too, but if you really want to enjoy the whole experience, you'll need some nice new old stock options to play with -- Mullard, Telefunken, the usual suspects, etc. There are some nice options at Upscale Audio, and Kevin Deal may be able to guide you to both hardware and tubes, but your mileage may vary with Kevin.
Good luck!