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On another note, I found that all six of the tubes in the IF receiver train were making poor contact with their sockets. These are all of the smaller variety, i.e. pins coming directly out of the glass with no plastic base. It was easy to test - I just put my finger on each one in turn and wiggled it a bit. None of the "octal" tubes showed any problem in this regard.
In the past, I had never had this problem before, and so I had not been cleaning all the tube sockets as a matter of routine - but I think I will in the future! What seemed to work was to spray some contact cleaner into each pin receptor, followed by inserting the tip of a toothpick into the pin receptor and twisting it. Dental picks did not apply enough abrasion to clean the socket. I also lightly sanded the pins on the tubes, just to be thorough. Voila, the set no longer reacts when I wiggle the IF tubes!
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