Lefty,
Just a thought since you don't want tubes...do a search for Kenwood, Yaesu or Icom on ebay...If I'm not mistaken, when I got my Kenwood transciever all of the above were putting out recievers too. I would look for one with a built in antenna tuner, depending on what kind of antenna you plan to run.
Punker's Tele looks good too, but if it's vintage it won't give you the full frequency spectrum.
My Kenwood TS-430 gives me 0-30megs to play around with. Last time I looked it was selling for between $200-$300. Plus if you ever feel the need to key down, it's rated at about a 100w output