It's a linestage, a preamp sans phono stage. John Broskie designed both the linestage and PSU circuits (separately) and writes about tube audio electronics over on the Tube CAD Journal:
http://www.tubecad.com/
To support his writing, John offers some really well-made PCBs (with or without components) implementing some of the ideas he writes about, including the Aikido circuit. The Aikido, named for the principle in that art of using the opponents force against him, is a cascaded self-regulating triode circuit topology. Here's a link:
http://glass-ware.stores.yahoo.net/ailiam.html
When you build one of John's circuits, even with supplied components, you have to make some important choices of components to leave in, or leave out, values, etc. Those choices can have significant consequences for the end result. So in that way, its different from kit building, at least in my experience.
For example, in the linestage shown above, the Aikido circuit topology will work with
any triodes, so long as the top and bottom tubes in the input stage are the same, and ditto for the top and bottom tubes in the output stage. So, you have to determine what are you aiming for in terms of input stage gain and output stage impedance. The choice of tubes includes a choice of operating point, the B+ the plates will see, and the choice of cathode resistor.
The Aikido linestage board has a B+ smoothing filter, but no PSU. So you have power supply choices to make to match your tube choices: solid state, or tube? Regulated or unregulated? If solid state, full-wave bridge rectifier or full-wave voltage doubler? 12.6 v or 12 v or 6.3 v or 6v heater supply? Reference the heater supply to a fraction of the B+ supply, or let it float in reference to ground? Transformer choices for the above?
Due to the choices you make when implementing one of these circuit designs, there is an opportunity to learn more than when building a kit (although that's a lot of fun, too).