[samsquanch]

I'm about to start building a Bijou amp, which will be my first venture into the world of tubes.  I have an idea for how I want to make my case, but it would involve having the sockets not directly soldered to the board.  I've seen plenty of people use jumpers to achieve this, but my question is, is there a point where the jumpers are too long?  Or can you more or less go all willy-nilly with it?

 

[nikongod]

There is really no reason you cant mount the tubes to the boards while still having a visually appealing layout. 
 
Regarding leads: shorter is better. As you increase lead length you increase parallel capacitance and the opportunity for noise pickup. The parallel capacitance reduces bandwidth which may eventually lead to issues with the feedback setup and everyone likes more bandwidth even if you don't run into stability issues. Noise just sucks. 

 

[samsquanch]

When I tried to lay my idea out it wouldn't work anyway, so that's scrapped.  Oh well! 
 
Is there a general don't-exceed-this length?  like two inches, or is it just a solder them to the board unless absolutely necessary?
 
"Noise just sucks."  I think Merzbow would disagree with you on this one...