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"Broken strand or possible desolder under the board when installing the components in the turrets?"

You may have hit the nail on the head right there... it's been a while since I built this so refresh my memory... are there ground wires routed on the bottom of the turret board? If so, run some jumpers up on top, aligator clips if needed, and see what happens.

Go through the schematic and check for continuity to ground from every component that is supposed to go directly to ground. Check at the component lead itself, not at the terminal or bus wire.

I built my TC-15 almost 9 years ago and the kits just had an eyelet board back then. I looked at my pictures and the ground busses are on the bottom.

Looking at the layout drawing and the photos for this amp, the ground buses are both on the top side of the board, built on the turrets. There are a few jumpers on the bottom for B+. There's a short ground bus for power at the filter capacitor end, followed by a longer ground bus that runs to the other end of the board for everything else. It finishes with a turret that has a wire coming out the bottom that connects to chassis ground.

Check this one very carefully. The soldering looks kind of suspicious in your photos. When you solder to a turret, make sure you get it hot enough so the solder freely flows into the turret's interior. It should fill the turret's hole completely and leave a nice, shiny top when you remove the iron.

And like Darren said, check all your grounds with a multimeter. One probe securely clamped to the chassis and the other on the component's lead before where it's soldered to the turret or ground wire. Measuring just to the solder connection may not reveal a bad solder joint to the component. Also wiggle things around to make sure the reading remains steady.

You should see the same reading you get when you short your two probes directly together - 0 ohms or very, very close to 0 ohms.

Checking in again... been silent for a week... hope he got this sorted out or maybe he took my advice and walked away for a bit.

Good tip about the cell phone—I've had that ticking issue before and moving it away helped. Also second the advice on checking ground connections, especially at the PT. Had a similar hum issue while working on my getmods project and it turned out to be a grounding problem too. The 5Y3 does add some nice sag, I kind of like the feel it gives when pushing the amp.

Sometimes caps need a bit of use to settle in, but new ones usually aren’t the issue. Check if the hum is 60 Hz or 120 Hz — that’ll help pinpoint the source. It could also be external interference, so try moving the amp, using a different outlet, or shielding the chassis. For the ticking, same deal — test in another room. Also, 5Y3 tubes handle less filter capacitance than 5AR4s, so if it’s running fine with the 5AR4, keep it. A choke in the power supply can also help reduce hum.