It is a good idea to purchase a vintage tube pre-amp.

I would have said a year ago that your best choice would have been to go used (Thor, Supratek, ARC, older CJ etc.)
This could be the golden age of inexpensive preamp! The rhumba, the Line Magnetcs Micro zotl2, the new Modwright, even the Pass headphone amp integrated does some things better than their statement preamp!

Melbguy,
                 They are both great pieces! I conflated a couple of preamps in my last post. It is the Linear Tube MicroZOTL2 ( which I have on order and obviously thought was sensational) and I'm sure Line Magnetics must have some tasty offerings in that price range. Terry London who is a great friend and a reviewer for Home Theater Review has written about most of these. 

Another good bargain is the Doge 8. Which is about $1500 new. As I said earlier the Linear Tube MicroZotl2 is ridiculously good for the price. Terry London thinks it is outrageously good also and uses it in his reference system. I too had a bias towards older Tube pieces until hearing this preamp. I have had used Supratek, Thor, ARC sp 10, VTL Ultimate, CJ Premier 10, precision fidelity 7a, Doge 8 and others in the budget line all the way to the CJ Art 3 and the ARC Ref 5. The purity of the Linear Tube MicroZotl2 is just amazing. When you roll the tubes it is about as good as it gets. David Berning is obviously a genius! Oh that reminds me that reminds that I had the Berning TF 12 at one time also!

Just received my Linear Tube MicroZOTL2 and it is stunner as a preamp right out of the box! Anyone looking for a preamp under $2,000 should give this a listen because it is amazing. It also responds to Tube rolling. I immediately put Tungsol Round plate 6sn7's in it and it plays music better than anything else I have ever heard! It only has three inputs and the remote will only adjust volume, but this piece is one of the great bargains in audio. I have heard most of the preamps in this thread and my opinion this is the best of the bunch! The tonality and imaging of this preamp (headphone amp actually) is just spot on. You really don't need to spend any more for world class performance. I want to give a shout out to Teajay who first introduced me to this preamp.