Great, good luck with that :)

Another thing that comes to mind: for audio purposes another technique used in ring modulators for audio effects is to use a mosfet switch to mix the signal with a square wave. This has more byproducts than mixing with a pure sine, but is a lot easier to do. Since you are downconcerting, it should not matter at all if you use a square wave, since the byproducts will all be (higher-order) harmonics of the local oscillator, which you’ll filter out anyway.