Shock of all shocks, it fired up on the first try without any problems -- no sparks, no flames, and all the voltages were pretty close to what they should've been.
It has changed some from the first day. I added the voltage divider to bias the 27 filaments at ~22v to get rid of some hum (there's still some left). And, I swapped out the EXO-01 for the Abbie chokes (along with the appropriate dropping resistor for the 0D3), changed out the filter cap, and messed with the ground leads some (still more to do there I think).
The only real change I still want to make is to try swapping in a 12A/112A for the 27. But, that'll probably wait until after the 56 -> RC-coupled -> 45 amp I'm working on now is done.
Thanks again for all the helpful suggestions I received when I first posted about this project. And thanks to Mike for all the wonderful iron.
Regards,
John