I was wondering since this would be my first homebrew amp, if there were specific instruction booklets that come with these 5e3 clone kits. I did not purchase a kit but rather all of the parts individually over the past 4 months or so. I now have all of the parts but figure that there must be some "order" in building this. Is is acceptable to put the whole circuit board together and then go from there? If anyone has a copy of instructions I would appreciate the guidance.

i don't know of any that come with a book but there are some things that i've read, and from experience that i think could help.
 
1 - do your heater wires first. they will be hard enough in the tight area without having other things in there to make it tougher.
 
2 - solder things to the brass grounding plate before you even put it in the chassis. you might just want to get your tone stack and input jacks completely done before you try to put it in the amp.
 
3 - put the whole board together before you put it in the amp. it will be pretty tough to build it in the chassis because of space. also, make sure the cathode bias resistor for the 6v6's is far away from the bypass cap. just look at pictures of other builds for examples. this resistor puts off some heat.
 
4 - after you get those things done, put the board in the chassis and run your wires to the tube sockets.
 
5 - you can put the trannys on the chassis at any time.
 
6 - after you have the board connected to the tube sockets, put the tonestack/brass grounding plate in. then wire it up.
 
at this point you should be pretty close to done. my advice, make sure that the parts you put in are the values they are supposed to be. double and triple check.
 
others will chime in with things to help. but i think this gives a good starting point. and print out bruces color layout to help you out. it's very helpful.
 
oh, and one of the hardest things to me was getting the OT center tap, the wire from the standby switch, the lead from the first filter cap and a resistor all in one hole. i built my board so i added an extra hole or two to make things easier in this area. even if you're board is pre-fab, i would still suggest this. it makes life a lot easier.
 
good luck
dean

where do I find Bruce's color layout?

http://www.firebottle.org/~deluxe/build.htm
 
You can see many sections of Toms build out here including the above referenced diagram...

5 - you can put the trannys on the chassis at any time.

others will chime in with things to help. but i think this gives a good starting point. and print out bruces color layout to help you out. it's very helpful.

oh, and one of the hardest things to me was getting the OT center tap, the wire from the standby switch, the lead from the first filter cap and a resistor all in one hole. i built my board so i added an extra hole or two to make things easier in this area. even if you're board is pre-fab, i would still suggest this. it makes life a lot easier.

hmm... never seen anyone do it that way.
However, the eyelet boards that come with my Mission Amps polished stainless Steel 5E3 chassis, uses 8 slightly bigger eyelets to connect the OT, 6V6's screen leads, cathode bias resistor, bypass and all three main filter caps... just to ease that part of construction.

where do I get Bruce's color layout?

this is a great site and full of info that can help you.
 
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/tweeddeluxe/
 
this page has the layout
 
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/tweeddeluxe/build.htm
 
more specifically, this is the layout.
 
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/tweeddeluxe/images/thumbnails/build/diagrams/5e3Layout1.gif
 
hope that helps.