GE H87 console radio questions

[RetroHacker]

I've been working on this GE console radio that I accquired a couple weeks ago.

The radio was silent as found, with slight static from the controls - but no audio. According to the seller, it "worked until last month". It had clearly been worked on sometime in the recent past, the grille cloth had been replaced with burlap, the speaker was replaced with a Realistic bookshelf speaker, and the wiring to the speaker and antenna was modern plastic coated wire.

Under the chassis, a couple of caps had been crudely replaced with orange drops, although most were still old paper capacitors.

I replaced the remainder of the paper caps, and the radio was still silent. I eventually found the problem - the pushbutton switch assembly. This radio has a row of pushbuttons on the front, for presets and to turn the set on and off. They're all in series, the first one being the setting to enable the tuning cap. It was so dirty, that no signal was getting through, so no sound.

After removing the assembly, thoroughly cleaning it and putting it back, the radio came to life and played very well. I touched up the alignment a bit "by ear" using a weak station, and soon had it clear and loud. There are a couple of nagging problems though:

There is a slight crackle in the audio, on all stations. It sounds a lot like record static, but it happens on talk radio too.

There is a high pitched whine in the background. Seems most noticeable when tuned to a station, but could be all the time.

The AVC doesn't automatically control volume. After getting a good clear signal on a weak station, I dialed over to a strong local station, and it was incredibly loud!

All the tubes test good (or at least good enough) on my simple emissions tester. All the paper caps except for two have been replaced (one's 1000v, and the other is 1600v, and I don't have those yet). These two seem to be only in the audio output stage. One's between the audio output transformer and the chassis. The filters are original, since I don't have any more high voltage electrolytics.

This is a power transformer type set, with two 5Y3 rectifiers, and push pull 6Y6 audio.

Any suggestions?

-Ian