So I double and triple checked my work and decided to do a test power up. Following Joe's instructions, less the control board info as I'm doing this without the control board, it went all the way up to 100% voltage without a hitch, no smell, sounds or smoke, so far so good. With the negative lead from my Fluke attached to the negative (black) binding post of the left channel and the positive lead attached to the positive (white) binding post of the left channel when set to V AC, I get 0.000-0.001, same on the right channel. If I go to my millivolt setting I get around 70 but those are DC volts and I'm pretty sure the outputs are AC, correct? If I am correct, I think I'm looking good to proceed with attaching the control board and doing the bias procedure.
I could be wrong (of course!) so I'll hold off on that until I hear from Lee or Joe on that.

I did screw up a little but fortunately I didn't have any issues. I believe Lee told me to do the DC protect circuit prior to testing, now that I think about it, but I didn't install that circuit yet. So, prior to connecting the control board to the backplane boards, I should no doubt install the DC protect circuit. Before I do any of that though, I think I'll re-route the wires the way Lee and Joe recommended and also replace the left and right channel negative output binding posts with the new ones I got with the DC protect circuit, along with the new RCA jacks. I love it when a plan comes together!