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@ this thread.

season 3 spoiler:

First Brisket done. I ended up skipping the crutch. I did wrap in foil and towels and rested it faux cambro in a cooler for about 2.5hrs. One thing that really sucks about the Big Steel Keg is that getting a decent smoke ring is very difficult. Definitely need a really really sharp carving knife to slice, it really starts falling apart when cutting against the grain. I think for the next Brisket I try, I will use less salt and pepper. Seems like Texans like death by sodium and pepper. I used half the black pepper than the recipe called for, and it's still a bit too much.

There are some general themes established throughout the thread (in no particular order) which if followed seem to lead to success more often than not. -> You can use (correctly rated) wanky resistors anywhere except the 700v batteries: these must be the specified Xicon part and should be raised off the board surface (for memory they are slightly inductive which adds a stabilising factor and stops a particularly annoying type of noise on the output). -> As a (possibly unique to me) extension of this: the dividers at the output of the regulators should be Xicon and raised (in my case the PRP units were leaking and causing the voltage to swing all over the place which is bad). -> At the minimum adjust all pots to the middle of their resistance/travel: Inu suggested middle for the 10k, max resistance for the 2k (this worked for me). -> Don't risk using possibly shitty nos 6922's: try for matched triodes as well as matched pairs (as an example, everything I've had from tubedepot has been good). -> Check your transformer voltages (at load if possible) before connecting them to any terminal blocks: never trust that things are as the spec sheet says. -> Fire up the psu BEFORE connecting it to the amp and check the voltages: load test if you can. -> Check all LEDs discarding ones that either don't work or have odd Vf: saves un-needed hassle and annoyance. -> Don't use fake parts: they are shit and cause various failure modes, none of which are good. -> If you have some form of tester then test all the sand: past basic sanity checks on the bjt's I didn't, this was a bit reckless and ymmv. -> Use teflon sheafed test points (digikey for example) on the batteries and only ever use one hand when moving probes (preferably you right one): this is basic practice, don't fuck it up. Apart from that there really is nothing else except to take a lot of care that you put the correct things in the right places. The great thing about the t2 is all of the leds in almost every major circuit component. Any time a bunch of them come on but others don't it really triangulates the fault. If you get the batteries into the right ranges then every led should be lit to some extent, if any are completely dark then that's your first place to start hunting for problems.