If any of you are like me and have somewhat fat fingers sometimes, and you, like me, find it to sometimes be infuriating to try and solder all your wires onto your 9 pin sockets, I have a recommendation for you...
tubedepot.com sells "heavy duty" 9 pin sockets, for i think the same price or maybe a dollar more, as their other sockets, but they're way better.
All the solder pins are a lot closer to the edge of the underside of the socket, so they're spaced further apart than the normal ones and they're slightly bigger too. The sockets themselves are ceramic, and their mounting hardware is attached to the socket so they can't come apart.
I forgot how big the hole they need is, but i think it was 7/8". It says on the site anyway.
The sheilds are marked with cyrillic letters and appear to be dated 1994.
I'm especially glad that I found these sockets, seeing as how the lightning needs five of 'em, and i was NOT looking forward to using the normal tiny little sockets.
anyway, I just figured that some of you might be interested, I'm sure not all of us are super endowed with dexterity