Are they planar and ribbon Nick?
Yes
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As any LV fool knows 
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I saw on pfm that Greg (Nagraboy), who some of you will remember from the Wam, was selling a very low hours Ortofon SPU #1S at a decent price. As I enjoy my mono SPU so much I thought it was a no brainer to add the stereo SPU to my cartridge collection.
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Time to wrap this one up.
I did some soldering practice. Not as much as I should, just some.
Last night, I went for it. Frankly, it was a horrible experience. My āhelping handsā device, while useful, doesnāt have enough hands. About six hands would have been about right. My soldering is absolutely fucking shocking, but I got the job done. The finished job is an ugly thing indeed - no silky smooth rivers of silver here. But the joints are secure. Did I mention ugly? Yeah, really gnarly.
But hey, with the XLR plug fully fitted, nobodyās going to see whatās underneath, so fuck it.
Now for the moment almost none of you were waiting for:
It works!
For how long is anyoneās guess, but Iām calling this a win.
Thanks again to Alan (XJC) for the PSU, Paul for the soldering advice, and anyone else who helped fill the pit of ignorance with knowledge (or something like that - Iāll probably have forgotten it all by next week).
Iād also like to thank tino and rabski from the Maverick Hifi forum - they filled in a lot of the gaps in my technical knowledge (which was basically one huge gap before I started this).
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Welcome to my world, where soldering quality is measured by weight. Bit late now but another bit of standard advice is that you should make a good connection and then solder rather than relying on solder to be the connection.
Oh, and donāt look at what @Valvebloke can do as there will be massive envy.
I imagine him as the Hendrix of soldering.
Is there a soldering equivalent of āMeh, heās just playin notes, manā.
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Relieved to see you are alive and uninjured 
All else is a bonus 
Tradition insists you must try the DIY PSU again at some point and discover that itās betterā¦ 
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I know.
Iām definitely not doing that, for the reason you have just given.
Disappointment is often disappointing.
Victory to another member of the Hamfisted Liberation Front!
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Also rather pleased with my cheapo no-brand soldering iron. It worked splendidly.
For the cost of a couple of pints (and maybe a packet of pork scratchings, depending on where you drink), Iām pretty chuffed with it.
The difference (in terms of ease of use) between the leaded and unleaded solder proved much more significant than I imagined. Leaded all the wayā¦
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Given the accident a couple of years ago I did try, under a lot of pressure, a little bit of work holding the soldering iron in my left hand. The results were āfunctionalā rather than tidy.
I donāt think Iām a particularly good solderer though. Just competent, really. Practice certainly helps and I do have one very clear advantage - I work almost entirely on repairing vintage kit. That would all have been constructed using Pb-based solder so thatās what I use almost all the time.
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My membership of that august establishment is awaiting moderationā¦
Iāll put in a word if you like, Iām well rowed in thereā¦
Very kind of you, but acceptability and worthiness are not necessarily the same thing.
I will set the bar at āhamfistā and see how long it takes me to rise to the challengeā¦
I suppose the next step is to connect some speakers and do some proper listening.
Fingers crossed that the amp proves to be worth the faff.
The plan is to run the amp with my Spendor S8e (another bargain buy, rescued by my legendary speaker bodgery skills - ahemā¦).
Just need to wait until I can be arsed to set it all up. In recent years, I seem to have developed some kind of aversion to wires (whatās that all about?)
It will look better than my two sweated copper-lead pipe plumbing joints. They both held too.
Wanna bet?
Kit valve amp next
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Donāt tempt me - Iād love to do that.