Yeah, I agree with everyone above. If I were you I'd get like a pretty busted up PSP (that can still turn on) and then try to fix it, bit by bit, so you learn it inside and out, plus you don't have the fear of wrecking it coz its already stuffed. Thats how I started PSP modding. My friend gave me his pretty busted up one. Wouldn't turn on at all (wasn't bricked) so I opened it up and saw the the ribbon for the home, display, volume buttons etc was unplugged, so I plugged that back in and it worked, then when I went to screw it back in I put the wrong screw in the wrong hole, it went to far and cracked the screen....which sucks! but I guess it was for a good reason because then I learnt how to replace screens and how to open the ribbon connectors lol....first time I tried I ripped the actual component of the mobo lol I couldn't distinguish between the black tab of the connector which flips up and the black end of the ribbon. Then I disassembled the whole thing, had a look how it all connects up and what connects where and then I took out the UMD drive and put two mini speakers in there and sound reactive LED's lol. So yeah, do that. By a broken PSP and learn/mod on that. Once your pretty confident. Mod your actual good PSP.
Hope this helps, happy modding :P
Max