My initial reaction to reading your tuner assembly post a few minutes after you submitted it was "Wow, awesome,
when can I get my kit?".
I think that your post/thread will become required reading for those awaiting their kits, especially for people with limited assembly experience. With any luck a lot of people will feel confident enough to tackle this project where they were once uncertain whether to have-a-go.
Perhaps though, I'm one of the
wrong people to 'chirp up' here since I'm very familiar with the skills and techniques required to assemble something of this nature...
Usually with these kits the documentation consists of loosely translated Chinese-English paragraphs accompanying an out-of-step PCB legend, thanks to PCA it seems those days are numbered!
The individual marking of components within the kit you described is unprecedented IMHO. This is THE point where most hobbyists go wrong with regular kits and at the same time where suppliers ship the wrong components and leave the hobbyist to 'make good' the situation by best guessing, that's where things often go awry.
Pre-bent legs on ICs? I've seen enough sub-assemblies where the assembler has 'shoehorned' the 'as manufactured' splayed IC legs
into a socket (and it looks like somebody else has too!) to know this is a really good idea.
All-in-all, assembly sounds boringly predictable and I doubt anyone will experience the
"sphincter factor" you mentioned. Assembling electronic kits isn't meant to be this way, you're *supposed* to have some sparks and smoke, otherwise where's the fun?