all the soldering seems pretty daunting though
I'd recommend getting a Quickie (and/or a Quicksand). They are inexpensive and run on batteries, thereby giving you some soldering practice without having to do high voltage checks right out of the gate. Plus they sound amazing. I started way back when on the original $99 Foreplay and was blown away what it did to my relatively expensive audiofool system.
Just be careful - building your own equipment gets addicting rather fast - as I've now built a Foreplay, Paraglows, Foreplay II, Quickie, Quicksand, Stereomour II, Seduction, Eros, many hot-rodded. When's Doc B. going to release that new speaker project?