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.  

Here's the situation: I have new speakers, 97 db. Trying them with lower watt tube amps (45/211, 300b, etc) seems generally wise. I am attempting to borrow some from audiophiles in the area. 

@hilde45 Unless your room is a smaller one, SETs using the tubes you mention here won't have enough power if you want realistic volume levels. They might sound 'loud' when playing such amps but if you use a sound level pressure meter (available as an app for most phones) you'll see they really aren't playing that loud- their 'loud' quality is brought on by distortion rather than volume, and how the distortion interacts with the human ear.

My speakers at home are 98dB and I found I needed more like 50 Watts; less than that and the amp seemed to strain a bit unless playing at lower volume levels. I don't play stuff all that loud FWIW, but if I go over 95dB I want the system to remain relaxed and effortless.

It won't matter if the amp is handwired or circuit board as far as sound is concerned, although a handwired amp can be updated a bit more easily and might hold up better in a tropical environment (such as on the coast in Florida).

I think you can still get Dynaco kits. A properly refurbished and/or properly built ST-70 can give any SET a run for the money, especially if given the benefit of good quality parts. For that matter we make a little 5 Watt stereo amp that can run circles around any SET that is near its output power. The 'magic' of SETs is mostly a made up story, based on the simple fact that when the SET is compared to a PP amp, the playing field is anything but level. When the PP amp has the same power rating and is built properly, the advantages of SETs go away.

SETs have a lot of weaknesses. I can go into them if you are interested; not going to list them all here. But two big ones are: you have to be very careful of the loudspeakers used as SETs usually have no feedback so the normal Voltage rules the typically govern speaker design don't work for them; in addition SETs only make about 20-25% usable power so the speakers have to be more efficient than most people think. So about 99% of speakers made are inappropriate for them.

The other problem is bass. SETs aren't good at that because the output transformer typically lacks the inductance needed to make bass, on account of having something called a 'cut core' which is a saw cut in the core of the transformer, put there to reduce distortion caused by DC flowing thru the transformer to feed the power tube. The lack of inductance means at low frequencies the tube is driving something very nearly a short (as far as the tube is concerned; put another way its driving the DC resistance of the winding of the transformer which is a couple orders magnitude lower than the impedance the tube is meant to see) and that's hard on the tube.

So for best results with SETs, its a good idea to prevent bass getting into the amp. The most successful SET installations I've seen and heard all used a different amp for the bass and had some sort of crossover to prevent the SET from having to deal with the bass.

The one exception to this problem are the Berning SETs, which use a patented system that gets rid of the traditional output transformer, using instead a radio frequency method of coupling between the power tube and the loudspeaker.

Listen to the advice from @atmasphere but take the advice from @carlsbad2 with a grain of salt. The whole point to point vs circuit board argument has many intangibles that need to be considered. It's not black and white. I also would not focus so much on the sensitivity spec but rather focus on the output impedance of the amp vs the impedance curve of the speaker. There are a lot of nice SET kits and SET DIY projects out there, but a nice low power PP amp kit will be a better option. There is one exception in my opinion and that is the Class A3 amp circuits from Jack Elliano.