Point to point wiring.

Russ_l - Based on my experience, it does not take much trace on a circuit board to muck-up the signal, particularly if the traces are wide, so it's hard to make this comparison. I would rather have 1 foot of good silver in a loose Teflon tube or cloth jacket than 3" of circuit trace for instance.

The grounding scheme is primarily to minimize loops and therefore increase noise susceptibility. The down side is that it generally forces the currents to flow in patterns that are not optimal for good transient response.

Like all design methodologies, there are good point-to-point designs and bad ones. If all the wiring is done correctly, to control the current and current-return paths, the performance can easily exceed that of printed circuit boards. The dielectric in circuit boards has very high dielectric absorption compared to good cabling.

It requires good cabling, good circuit design and a knowledge of power delivery and signal path current flows to get a good result. Most tube amp and even some SS amp designers like to star-ground everything. This is good for noise abatement, but usually not good for the sound....results in a soft-sounding amp, no dynamics.