Best Integrated Tube Amp for 2.5K or Less

...don't you need some juice for these speakers?
you could try pathos hybrid amp that has 80w/ch and its new price is arround 2k.
there is mesa boogie integrated amp that can meet your power requirements. definitely you should go with higher power than nad 340.
in your situation i would go for ss plinius 8200 -- sounds like tubes very musical and worm in fact it's realy my favorite integrated amp that can smoke many separates for the price offered.

Jolidas have cheap chinese valves, cheap trannys, cheap coupling capacitors and throw a great amount of DC into the speaker. Beware! Most of the time its specified characteristics do not correspond to reality.
You buy Jolida to change everything except the circuit board or the wiring(which is also cheap but OK).

VTLs are the Manley's quality designes and they're all great.

CJ you shouldn't buy used since the built quality lacks of reliability.

I understand that from Jolida it's possible to make something like VTL but than again spending on parts may not be as beneficial as simply buying used VTL.
VTL isn't the bottom line still and can be significantly upgraded and be kind-of Kora or BAT and that's where I'm standing to with my VTL MB100. From my experience most of the tube amps are very simple ecpecially SET(the oldest and the weakest design of amplifier). The complicated ones are Cary and BAT that can switch automatically their type of operation.

the only word there is ENJOY...

Asa, from nothing to tubes?

IMO there shoudn't be any comparison between $350 NAD and $2K VTL.

I would call convert that would go from EMC3 to VTL IT85 for example.

Asa,
From now on i begin to understand that it's not a SS vs. tube issue in general rather than pure and simple bucks. I 100% agree that in 2...6K range VTL amps are standing to be the one of the best and they do beat SS correspondedly. There are different ranges like $400 for instance where probably Creek 4330 is probably the best if used with easy-drivable speaker. Would you find any descent tube amp for $400...500 that will sound descent or better than SS in that range? -- I doubdt.