Many thanks, this is really helpful stuff, just was I was looking for...
I'll give all that a try in the next couple of days and post nack here to let you know how it all went.
PS: the resistor you are using between pins 1 and 8 seems to be a 10,000 ohm (10K) rather than a 10 ohm.. this will kill the gain in a second.
haha, I really need to do more of this stuff, I do that almost every time I dig out the arduinos.
cheers.