This is a quick summary of things I noted during the disassembly. I'll keep it brief, since there are much higher quality summaries than I could ever hope to recount on here. I also didn't take many photos of the process. 

One of the biggest concerns I have with the disassembly process is the difficulty of getting the pan/tilt connector out of the black plastic housing. It was challenging to say the least and a bit heart pounding. I see this as the biggest potential failure point for anyone trying to do a restoration on their own.

Another challenge was separating the two halves of the interior frame. I felt a bit nervous about breaking the clips, but if you wedge a guitar pic between the two halves and gently nudge each clip as you gingerly ride the pic up along the crack, you should be able to separate the two haves without too much trouble. 

Finally, there's the microphone daughter board. The LED indicator light is apparently fused to the internal frame either with adhesives or some sort of ultrasonic welding. I tried to remove it but couldn't see any way to remove it without damaging it. Since this restoration is meant to be non destructive, I've elected to use the stock audio board in my design. Ultimately the sound quality should be decent enough for a webcam, and it incorporates a built-in off the shelf ADC, so I shouldn't need to fiddle with optimizing the microphones' (yes there are two of them!) dynamic range. Sadly I might have to destroy mine to reverse engineer it successfully. More on that when the time comes...