Many thanks to everyone on this thread, it's been unbelievably interesting and helpful.
I took the dive and started the process on a 5g-video and I got the two caps near the DAC off. Some pics here:
As I turned to the dock side of things I noticed some traces going to bare metal pads (green arrows). Specifically:
I confirmed with a multimeter that L2 and L3 are connected to these pads (green arrows). In measuring resistance I found that they both have 1 Ohm resistance stably. Meaning that little things pointed at with the red arrows are probably resistors. I also confirmed with multimeter that the top series of pads newly exposed near the DAC are indeed connected to the metal pads (green arrows). Obviously the lower series of newly exposed pads by the DAC are not connected (but confirmation is good to ensure no crossbridging).
A few questions:
1) Can we just solder from the DAC to these pads and then get rid of L2/L3?
2) Is it necessary to kill L2/L3 if we have removed the Caps up next to the DAC? Since we should have theoretically killed the circuit up top anyway why do we have to kill it again near the dock?
If the answer to both of these questions is 'yes', then I think this would be the most simple way to mod the 5g.
1) Take out the two caps near the DAC
2) Solder thin wires from the newly exposed pads near the DAC to the metal pads.
From previous experience from surface soldering I would urge everyone to tape the wires down before soldering and to use the thinnest wires possible. Lifted pads are NOT easy to fix.