**Smoking integrated tube amp, advice needed:

Hey folks, first time tube amp owner, first time poster here. 

I just received my first tube amplifier - a Mistral MT34 integrated tube amp (35 wpc), and am excited to experience the warm analogue sound that I’ve been saving toward for such a long time. After plugging it into my system, however, it almost immediately started smoking from what looked to be the preamp section/tubes, so I immediately switched it off and disconnected it. The filaments were **glowing** red, and the room filled with electrical smelling smoke.

The component chain looks like this:

Pro-Ject Perspective turntable > Bellari VP129 Phono preamp (100 ohms output impedance) via RCA to the AUX port of > Mistral MT34 integrated amplifier (100k ohms input impedance) > KEF Corelli speakers (8 ohms).

I connected the black side of each speaker cable to the white amp input, and the red side to the red 8 ohm tap of the amplifier.

Is there a catastrophic mismatch between my equipment specs that could have caused me to fry the amp? Have I set it up incorrectly? There’s a new electronic safety test sticker from April 2024 on it as I bought the amp from a charity shop on eBay, so this is throwing me. The description said it was turned on and functioning before the sale, however, so if the seller plugged it into power without connecting to speakers first, could this have damaged the circuitry/caused damage that might have led to this smoking? Would a single blown tube lead to this outcome?

I’m worried I may have fried or permanently damaged the amp, and now face a hefty spend on investigating this with a local AV repair specialist - a cost which I didn’t anticipate, and which has dampened my excitement, honestly. 

I’d also liked to know what caused the issue before I try to integrate it back into my set up and do the same thing again.

Any thoughts or advice appreciated. Thanks so much!