Thinking about re-wiring my car. Have considered about every direction possible.

K&R and DD have pretty straight forward wiring with their kits and costs are about the same. Both have relays boards with soldered permanent relays.

Painless has similar kit with with a automotive style removeable relays.

I'm somewhat leery of the permanent relays of the K&R and DD in the event should a relay fail, the board would need to be sent back at some point for repair, while the Painless just swap in another relay. Meanwhile, I can count on one hand how many relays i've had fail in 25 years.

What are your experiences with the above products? Favorable features over one or the other?

K&R makes good stuff, but I am like you, I don’t like printed circuit boards with fixed relays. In fact I don’t like relays. I totally believe if you wiring is adequate, and the circuit is fused correctly, you don’t need a relay. It is just something else to go wrong. Been running race cars for over 50 years and only had one relay on my car in that time period. It went bad when the mount broke and I have never had another one. Good old point to point single circuit wiring works great, holds up well and is easy to trace if you have an issue. I am sure all the relay guys are going to jump all over this but they are just extra crap you don’t need.

Most all people get more than 10 years of racing out of those style of boards. I have re wired several cars, re using those boards that were that old and havent had any issues.

I would not hesitate for a second to use either the DD or K&R. I have wired numerous cars with both styles over 15 years or so and haven't had 1 failure. For the price it is tough to beat either one.

Use a relay board. Either one is good. If by some chance a relay were to fail, just move the output to a different relay as a temporary fix. Relay boards can help make troubleshooting electrical problems easier as well.

Both companies are Excellent in the products & Customer Service. Whichever way you go you wont be disappointed.

I have a K&R in my door car great product and tech assist if needed

I think you can access the back of the DD boards. Just heat and suck the solder and replace the relay?

I have K&R in both our cars and have installed a few others, never a problem and very user friendly. I hear they have excellent customer service too but aside from ordering the kits I've never had to to deal with them otherwise lol
I wired my Nova using a Painless kit, not a fan.