Both good ideas. For reference, $1000 up here roughly gets you :

- midway between Denon 2105 (899) and 2805 (1199)
- Yamaha 1500 (999)
- midway between HK235 (899) and HK335 (1299)
- Pioneer Elite 52 (or 1.5x Pioneer 1015 )
- Denon 5805 (whoops, typo, that's $10,000)

M60ti, VP180, QS8, M2ti, EP500, PC-Plus 20-39
M5HP, M40ti, Sierra-1
LFR1100 active, ADA1500-4 and -8