Managed to finish this off during the forum hiatus, using a combination of your advice and a few tricks i picked up from this excellent video i found a position/orientation with minimum interference and made up a bracket to hold the output transformer there. The background noise is only barely noticeable now with my most sensitive headphones so i'm perfectly happy with it.
I've been using this little amp for a while now and love it, believe it or not i found 32ohm Grados a very good match with it, volume level is usually around 3/4 which is fine. It does sound lovely though, and still sounds like a quickie which is the most important part. I'll post some pics soon..
Thanks again guys!
Mark