We present the design and operation of an ytterbium ion trap experiment with a setup offering versatile optical access and 90 electrical interconnects that can host advanced surface and multilayer ion trap chips mounted on chip carriers. We operate a macroscopic ion trap compatible with this chip carrier design and characterize its performance, demonstrating secular frequencies >1 MHz, and trap and cool nearly all of the stable isotopes, including 171Yb+ ions, as well as ion crystals. For this particular trap we measure the motional heating rate and observe an ?1/?2 behavior for different secular frequencies ?. We also determine a spectral noise density SE(1 MHz)=3.6(9)×10-11 V2 m-2 Hz-1 at an ion electrode spacing of 310(10) µm. We describe the experimental setup for trapping and cooling Yb+ ions and provide frequency measurements of the 2S1/2?2P1/2 and 2D3/2?3D[3/2]1/2 transitions for the stable 170Yb+, 171Yb+, 172Yb+, 174Yb+, and 176Yb+ isotopes which are more precise than previously published work.