Your journey with lower-watt tube amps -- Can a kit be good enough?

There are not that many tube amp kit sellers these days.  I've heard decent sounding amps from ANK (a company that makes kits based on Audio Note (uk) designs and utilizing a lot of Audio Note-sourced components).  I've also heard nice kit amps from Sun Valley and Elekit.  I know that Elekit offers many options for upgrading the parts in their amps, including using higher quality output transformers.  In tube amp, the most important thing is the quality of the output transformer.  Amps from kit suppliers, like the one's I mentioned above, are very good bargains for the money, but, their being so few kit amps available, it would be hard to find ones that fit your specific needs and requirements (like remote control),  Most of the kits are for simpler designs, like very low-powered single-ended triode amps); if that fits your bill, and you are up to the challenge, that would be a fun way to go.

I've heard good examples of tube amps that utilize PCB for most of their circuits.  These amps, if designed well can be reasonably reliable and are readily fixable.  I would not rule out any candidate just because it does utilize PCBs.  Note too that some designs that look like they are using PCBs are actually using boards to lay out components, but the connections are by point-to-point wiring.

Generally speaking, it takes a lot of experience, help from knowledgeable, or luck, to get into buying vintage tube gear.  It is not easy to find shops where such gear can be found in good condition and where you can actually hear the item at the shop or in your own system.  Vintage tube gear can be quite a bargain and can sound very good because the technology behind tube gear is really mature and has not really advanced in MANY years.  Among the very best sounding tube amps are amps made  around 1930 (e.g., certain Western Electric amps).  Also, many vintage amplifiers can be brought back to near new condition by replacing parts with stuff that is available today, while many vintage solid state amps don't have available parts.  

I don't want to interpret for someone else, particularly someone with vastly more hands on equipment building and technical knowledge than Alex Berger, but, I don't think "impossible" meant it cannot be done--its more like it cannot be done optimally.  Clearly Sun Valley is doing it; the question is whether this is a good approach.  I think that there are lots of suboptimal designs that are done to lower cost, so it is helpful that Alex Berger is pointing this out.  I too have my doubts about the plethora of low cost 300B SET amps with 12AX7 drivers and no interstage transformer--this might be less than ideal, so the question is whether this is the right cost-quality tradeoff.  I am not saying it is the wrong tradeoff, but, it helps for buyers to be aware of the issue.

The mention of a directly coupled cathode follower by atmasphere is interesting.  Today, I just happen to be looking at the schematic for an old Wyetech SET amp and noticed it had a directly coupled cathode follower to the grid of the output tube.  

PCB is easy to solder, except when it comes to repairs.  Usually that involves an extra step of having to unmount the board to get to the correct side, and it sometimes means having to bridge a trace or make other such repairs where you pulled a trace or pad while unsoldering and trying to replace a component.  

For looks, as well as the benefits of ease of repair, I like point-to-point using turret boards.

Speaking of good point-to-point wiring, I saw an amp built by a Russian builder that was so carefully laid out that there is hardly any wire in the amp, almost all connections being lead to lead (and short leads at that).  All of these connections were extremely tightly wound together before being soldered.  The dealer showed me an amp that had been running for years that this builder made while a bit drunk.  About a third of the connections weren't even soldered but they functioned perfectly.  Another repair professional charged extra to work on this Russian's amps because of the difficulty in removing components.  I owned one of these amps and I planned to replace the diodes in the bridge rectifier, but when I looked at what that entailed, I gave up.  The entire bridge rectifier was about the size of a thumbnail and was stuck in a tight space under other components that would have to be removed to get at it.  I could not even figure out how he got everything into such a tight ball.