That happened to me too. The first time I heard tube amplification which was about i guess 3 years ago, it brought me back into an interest in music at home and it gave me an interest in audio.
But now 1 and 1/2 years of listening to sets, tube amplification in itself is no longer the most satisfying. I have and I know the p-p and otl sound. I really want it to be a set and it needs to sound a certain way.
And I had a bigger system in one room and the 2nd set system in an adjacent room, and after 6 months I became convinced that the set system was way better.
I think sets and low cost, and sets and personal systems go hand in hand.
Past this, I cannot offer too much information. I'm sure Gordon Rankin's wavelength amps are very good. He uses ac and he knows what he is doing, keeping it simple. But his stuff is not cheap.
I heard the early Jeff Korneff 45 with vintaqe transformers, and that is probably an excellent amp. His newer stuff may be excellent also, but I haven't heard it.
Maybe some of the bottlehead stuff and wellborne stuff is good. I don't know.
I get my amps from a friend who builds them, pretty much the way I want them. And I have some diy's from other that I had purchased previous to my friend's building that weren't too expensive and are good.
The output transformers are the most important ingredient in a set amp, it seems to me. But I don't know and can't say yet which are the best among the good ones. Other than that, the other variables that i mentioned such as simplicity and ac.
But if you have a chance to listen to a few, you realize that some really just sound right and good, and others less so. But if they have the basic principles most sound pretty good.
Speaker matching matter too.
That's all I really know.