Schiit Wotan is Really great. I think it compares with many amps I have heard up to $20K, in that its competitive and reasonable people could actually prefer it’s sound over other far more expensive amps.
Another amp I might consider is the Cary 200ES, which is slightly above your price range but is often on sale. This amp I believe is made to spec by Morris Kessler’s company ATI, and is a true dual mono construction. From word of mouth and review, it has a slightly warm musical sound.
I will also toute my amp if you can get it used. The SST Son of Ampzilla has a really beefy power supply (2 KW toroidal transformer with independent windings for each channel and 100,000 mfd of capacitance), a simple but effective power rail management with simple inline fuses), true mono design, and is biased to approximately 10 watts per channel in class A. It has a simple case with non fancy heat sinks, but it really competes with far more expensive amps. It has quite a liquid sound with a great sense of depth and air around instruments, as well as good dynamics and sense of authority. So much of the price of many high end amps is driven by expensive casework and fancy meters, with relatively puny power supplies.