Sockets wired

The plan for socket wiring looks like this:

 (pre-amp socket wiring plan)

The idea is to keep signal wires away from the high voltage and heater wires, or to cross them at 90 degree angles. 

Here's how they look, mostly complete:

(Pre-amp and phase inverter sockets wired)

The pre-amp sockets are closer together in reality than as shown on the plan, so a couple wires on V2 (a plate load wire and a cathode wire) are actually closer together than I'd like.  I may be able to separate them a bit, but will wait until I complete the wiring of the leads, then try to bend things around one final time.

(Power tube sockets wired)

Speaking of leads, the thick looking wires in the layout  figure at top are the ones carrying the low voltage signal to the preamp tubes, or are otherwise connected to the sensitive tube grids (my guitar pickups typically generate up to about 300 millivolts AC). For these, it's good to encase the signal wire in a mesh wire shield, pull a sleeve of heat-shrinkable insulation over it (hence the added thickness), and leave the twisted mesh sticking out at one end so it can be connected to ground. You can buy shielded cable already made up, but since I have the materials, why not just make it. The net shield deflects radio frequency signals to ground before they can find their way into the amp via the signal wire. One could, and many do, add shielding to many more of the wires, but in this amp these are the ones most vulnerable to such interference since they are long in length and connect directly to the control grids of the tubes. Plus it's a pain to do, so I just did the four. Here are three of them:

(Pre measured Shielded leads)

These will be placed last, since they run in the space above the circuit board, and would get in the way of populating the board if I do them now.