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Bill -
I'll trust your experience. My Capehart was my first TV restoration (after about 50 radios from circa 1935 to 1950). The mentor who walked me thru the restoration was a lifer TV repairman, and he made me build the Solid-State rectifier for the project. For our capacitor re-form experiment, instead of using a variac, we used a Lionel train transformer, and for the first six or eight hours the line-input voltage was less than ten volts. The first half-hour or so, the measured voltages at the positive-side of the filter caps being under a volt. The output of the 5V transformer secondary at that point would have been something less than half a volt. I don't believe a 5U4 vacuum tube will conduct at all under those circumstances. My understanding is that a very vintage cap, to be reformed, needs to be handled very delicately at first, and the Solid-state rectifier was the proper solution. But I'm new to the game and will happily admit being wrong, if wrong, and hope I didn't misadvise anyone. Thanks for your input.
- Kirk
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