hi,
I also learnt soldering while building a cmoy. it wasn't all to hard - at least not the soldering part. but the casework is a PITA if you don't have the experience nor the right tools (dremel is really helpful).
from the experience-gain point of view, the cmoy was worth it. SQ-wise, driving low impedance Grado headphones, well, it's not such a great improvement (hint: don't bother with the opa2132. ad823 is imho a much better replacement)
I hadn't soldered before I built it either. I bought a couple extra boards & a package of resistors & just practiced before I started the amp. My amp didn't work right though & I have not gone back to troubleshoot it. So I can't say I did it as a weekend project. But if I had been a little more patient I probly could have done it in a weekend. Its doable without knowing anything but can be a little frustrating if you truely no NOTHING as I did!
digikey.com and mouser.com should have everything you'll need for a cmoy.
parts:
buy standard 1% metal film resistors
opamp: do not buy the recommended opa2132 or opa2134. or only for testing/as a spare. there are quite a few different opinions on which opamp to get - I'd say go with an ad8620, ad8066 or opa2228.
the rest of the parts... well, just look on tangent's site, there's a part list there already which should work fine
cmoy is pretty easy to build, pretty fool proof. As long as you stick with the build plan you will be ok. Most problems come from wanting to change things around.
I'm like halfway into my first Cmoy. The soldering is pretty easy, but you might do a few practice joints with some spare resistors and an extra perfboard just to get a feel for how much solder is enough / too much.
I'm leaving out the potentiometer and even the jack on the input; just running a cord through some strain relief and using the volume of the source. I'm kind of hoping somebody will inform of potential drawbacks to that here. But the hard part is all the wiring of stuff to other stuff, so it may be worth it.
My first soldering project was a guitar effects box, using the leads as circuit paths (i.e., point to point). It was complicated, and frustrating, and it turned out great. The Cmoy is comparatively simple, especially when done on the patterned board that Tangent's guide uses. Make sure to check out Tangent's soldering tutorials to avoid those three-minute solder joints
I believe it was mentioned somewhere above but be sure to buy extra parts in case of a mess-up.
My first CMOY did not work, and there was this deep pit in my stomach telling me I failed. To this day I still can't figure out why it doesn't work, but I had enough parts for a second one right away.
Try not to use too excess solder because it tends to lead to unwanted bridged connections.
I built my first cmoy this past weekend having no prior electronics or soldering experience. Following tangent's guide made it easy enough. Some tips from when I built mine:
Take special note of the polar capacitors (C1). One has the top lead +, while the next has the top lead -. I didn't catch it at first when I was looking at his layout, and it almost cost me a cap
Also, using leads for jumpers was frustrating for the M or S jumpers tangent suggests you make. I used 22 gauge wire instead, and setting up the board went a *lot* faster after that.
Wiring the pot and jacks isn't terrible, but I could not for the life of me figure out the jacks' pins until I finally sucked it up and learned how to use my DMM to match the parts of an interconnect cable to the leads coming out of the jack when it was plugged in. The datasheet was useless, the DMM saved the day
If you have to buy equipment, get desoldering braid. I had a lot of trouble getting the proper amount of solder to flow to the joint at first, either I would have too much or too little. In the "too little" case I would have solder on one side of the lead but not on the other, and in the two much case I would bridge adjacent contact pads or leads. Desoldering braid is pretty easy to use and cleans up soldering messes really well - and it is the one thing I considered not buying before starting (I thought I would be pretty good at soldering
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