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I strongly prefer to presume paper capacitors to be unreliable and replace them, however, limited bench space and an aversion to leaving open chassis strewn about the house and shop tends to cause me to "button up" some of my own gear and set it aside to focus on items that customers have sent. My own collection has well-hidden protective devices installed and re-formed electrolytics and each unit will be recapped as time and space permit. Electrolytics, however, are sealed units which can be tested reliably and any such units which can be re-formed to within the often-cited maximum leakage specification of 1/5(sqrt(C*V)) microamperes I prefer to leave in place rather than hanging modern electrolytics underneath the chassis when the original cans are working. I am, however, working on the development of an efficient way of re-stuffing the cans with modern capacitors so as to avoid the need for re-engineering sets to make room for modern electrolytics under the chassis. There are multiple considerations in developing this method, among them is providing terminal lugs on the bottom of the re-stuffed capacitor cans which have mechanical strength to allow them to be used as tie points for other components as was often done in the sets' original layouts. The first few cans I have opened by loosening the crimp along the circumference of their bases often suffer damage to the phenolic wafers which supported the terminal lugs during heating to loosen the insides of the units. I'm working on resolving this issue by practicing on a box of "junk" cans that I have saved.
My aversion to leaving sets open was especially strong when a former live-in girlfriend insisted on her four cats being allowed to have the run of the house and not be chastised for or deterred in any way from climbing on anything, including computer, audio, video, or any other electronics in the house. Aside from her refusing to work, contribute toward expenses, or to share household responsibilities as we had agreed, occasional damage to equipment and the impossibility of playing my extensive collection of vinyl without fear of the turntable being disturbed while operating were among the many reasons for my ending that relationship.
As an aside, my ex eventually did ease up on insisting that the cats not be chasised for climbing on electronic items after I told her of a technical support call to a satellite television service that I had heard about. According to the agent who took the call, it began with the customer stating that, until an hour ago, he HAD a satellite receiver and he HAD a cat. It seems the late feline made the fatal choice of "marking" the receiver as part of his territory, hitting the unit's AC power supply and thus electrocuting himself and blowing out the receiver. After I warned her of the risks to the cats' safety by their being allowed to climb on live electrical equipment, she decided that chastising them was better than risking that they might suffer the same fate as that satellite customer's unfortunate pet.
One of the cats hacked up a hairball on my workbench at one point. Fortunately, there was nothing sitting open on the bench at the time and no paperwork sitting out to possibly be destroyed. The carelessness of other family members and a sibling who once fired 6 or more shots from an air rifle into the laminated safety glass on a nice '68 Zenith B/W portable's 12" CRT taught me to not leave equipment out in the open. My "kid" brother and a friend of his were trying to see if they could get that CRT to implode while I was out on a date with one of a series of girlfriends during my teen years. Of course, beating the crap out of him for it wasn't an option. A few years later, when he asked me to "cover" for him while he cheated on a girlfriend of his, I got even by making sure he got caught. lol The "other woman" dumped him, and the "steady" girlfriend kept him on a short leash for a while. Didn't really do anything to get him caught other than a crummy job of discouraging the "steady" from showing up at the house while the other girl was there. Got even for that shot-up picture tube.
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