Still not sold on carbon wheels...What is your take on carbon wheels?
My personal feeling is that they're not worth the cost unless you're racing and even then, it's questionable if you're doing events like criteriums where crashes are common and wheel damage is likely. The same is true if your local roads are really bad. It's one thing if a sponsor gives you wheels but it's quite another when you're shelling out your own cash.
What would you say are good value alloy wheels in the 1000 range?
Why do you think you need to spend that much?
You can build lighter, but still durable wheels for less than half that. The wheels I've been riding for the past few years are 1285 grams and cost me ~$250 to build (I weigh 170#, BTW). They'd still be under $300 to build today. Even if you have to add $100 or so to have someone build them for you, it's a much better deal than off-the-shelf options. Additionally, by using standard components, you can get them serviced at any bike shop. With many "boutique" wheels, you are locked into components that are only available through the manufacturer, making repairs costly and time-consuming.
If you want more durable wheels, they're not any more expensive, just a bit heavier. You can easily stay under 1500 grams; my cyclocross wheels are 1480gr. including rim tape and 27mm deep rims.
For the $1000 you're thinking of spending, you could get two sets of wheels built and have a spare pair on hand. I
always have spare wheels for my bikes and wouldn't think of being without them, even though I've very rarely needed them. Most often, I put different tires on my spares for different conditions.
All that said, what you gain with carbon rims is better aerodynamics for a given weight; that's it. Whether that's a major factor that's worth increase in price is up to you to decide. For me, I'll take light weight for climbing, plus ease of service, over aerodynamics and my aluminum wheels meet those requirements. I can always draft other riders if I'm in a group (making aerodynamics largely moot) and if I'm out riding on my own, I don't care about aerodynamics as I'd rather get the slightly harder workout.
Edit: Currently running rim brakes on both bikes, i've hear disk and carbon wheels are the way to go.
My current cross/gravel bike came with carbon rims and disc brakes (I bought it used, so I didn't pay a premium for the wheels). I only use the carbon rim wheels for road riding and run wheels with aluminum rims and tubeless tires most of the time. I agree that disc brakes really help to optimize the advantages of carbon rims.
I just spent a week riding a Trek Domane with carbon rims and rim brakes. While the brakes worked fine, they did take considerably more hand pressure than the aluminum rims I typically ride and weren't especially confidence-inspiring. Perhaps they didn't have the optimum brake pads, but I really don't know.