Motorola Troubles

[jpdylon]

I''ve been working on this motorola suitcase 7VT5b with the TS-18 chassis. i picked it up for 20 bucks, so I said what the hell. All the caps but the filters have been replaced by whoever owned it last. I had to re-thread the pins on the 7jp4.

Put it on the variac and went up to 50 volts and waited. About 10 seconds after which I heard a crackling noise. I killed the power and looked in the back for any signs of destruction. I also could not smell anything nasty. The filters were not warm or hot. However the "ballast tube" was very hot. I'm guessing this serves as a dropping resistor for the tubes as well as a fuse?

I've got the sams for this set, but I'm not sure where to start. I would like to get this working just for the sake that I could, but I'm not hating the thought of using it for parts either. The case isn't great, its missing knobs, and I've got two others that can use parts.

Any thoughts?