How much harder is it to do the mod on a regular 3ds as opposed to the easier XL one?
It's not that much harder as far as soldering. You just have to solder one wire on the underside of the motherboard. The hardest part is cutting the hole in the bottom of the shell (I drilled a hole and filed the rest out). Be sure to insulate the bottom pins, so they don't short out and give you boot errors.