I have to say a big thank you to ntunk, havoc, studio32 and last but not least thorgal (and anyone else I may have missed).
Thanks guys. My hardware is now working, I'm getting high latency on Jack still, but it all seems to be in time and working.
If it wasn't for you guys I think last night I would have thrown the towel in - I should NOT have more than few beers when trying to get things working - not because it gets harder, but because I get upset about it not working instead of fixing it
If you're really unlucky I may post some of my, ahem, 'creations' up at some point
Seriously though, thank you so much - I've been wanting to do this for a very long time, and this is by far the closest I have come!
Hopefully, some of my troublesome threads will stay about in case someone has the same trouble/hardware.