I agree with others--Rogue hits a sweet spot in sound quality and value. A solid product and a great company behind it.
Here's another option. I personally have gone with used Conrad-Johnson components. Top notch sound to my ears, easy to listen to for hours without that "mushy" tube sound, yet still have that liquid midrange everyone raves about, and plenty of detail on top and some good bass slam when needed. They use simple circuitry and are well-built, and I believe anything under 20-25 years old will have no electrolytic capacitors to take a dump. Mine are well over 15 years old with no issue whatsoever. One of their Premier preamps would be within your budget, albeit without phono stage.
Any tube separates can be an issue though. In this era of digital and vinyl, owning a preamp with a built-in phono stage is a double-edged sword. In many cases, you have to buy a separate phono stage, and there are all kinds of options out there--having the phono stage built in is a convenience. Yet if you buy a preamp with a phono stage, and listen to both digital and vinyl, consider that you are "burning" your tubes needlessly. I go days without spinning vinyl, meaning that over the course of a year, it would be hundreds of hours on phono stage tubes that were unused. So I'm more a fan of a separate phono stage at this point. Just to use C-J's older preamps as an example, it's possible that anywhere from two to four of the tubes are dedicated to the phono section alone. (My C-J phono stage uses four.) And in the digital age, I can't think of any manufacturer who offers a separate power switch for the phono section (although I've never really looked to see if any of them power down the phono section when other sources are selected).