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Originally Posted by doogie812
I find it interesting that on most of these restoration projects I keep reading “Recap Recap Recap”. The truth is if you have a vintage electrolytic that shows no leakage (infinite DC resistance) and ESRs’ (electronic series resistance or low AC resistance) good it will likely out last any attempt to stuff a bunch of small electrolytics in series in the old can to obtain the proper operating voltage. Yes they must be brought up SLOWLY to repolarize them. The critical ones are the deep cycling high voltage differential coupling caps. These are the ones that will eat your lunch and cost you flyback transformers.
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But the vast majority of them will not show infinite resistance nor have decent ESR readings, we know this from experience. I will never trust a vintage set to a 60 year old cap, just as a matter of good practice. You may take your own chances as you see fit. As you already said, itmight cost you more than the price of a cap when it does god bad...
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One I have not seen mentioned is the high voltage rectifier. I have more than one crapy little $3.00 3A3 or 3AT2 eat a $60.00 flyback transformer. If the thing has any significant Edison effect on the glass replace it. Not a tube tester in the world will catch it and it will likely leak or short while your out of the room leaving you with a HV cage full of goo. Hope this helps.
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Not sure what this has to do with the alignments he's now currently engaged with, but would you care to explain what you mean by Edison Effect on the glass? If you mean the blue glow of electrons striking the glass, there's nothing wrong with that, but it's also not called the Edison Effect.