I can tell you that the kit sounds awesome, if it's purely for aesthetics if you can figure it out on your own I know there have been a couple people who have purchased the kit and then ditched the circuit board and wired it point to point and converted it to tube rectification but I'd be surprised if you can get the kit setup like this. (and I would pinch Steve really hard if it was )  

I believe that the kit layout is a compromise to keep the price low enough to make it affordable for the DIY'er without eating into sales of completed amps.

I can't say enough about the sonics of the kit however, seriously the best amp I have and I have a few, half of them I built myself including that one. The only amps I have that come very very close are a pair of SET mono's that I built, but the kit is still better.

Good luck!

On another note, yes the kit sounds WAY better than anyone would expect.  The only thing that will best it is a production model SE84C+ by the same company

However, if you would like to take it up another notch, build a pair of the ZKIT2's with a single power transformer.  It's about a 15% improvement in performance across the board.

Steve