Rca Ctc9

[Ampico-kid]

Speaking of sets that are "going to blow", I'm wondering what the consensus is regarding cap replacement?

All of my restoration work so far has been on sets that are older than this CTC9 chassis and used paper caps. There was no question that all of the electrolytics and paper caps had to be changed. The CTC9 does have a number of electrolytics that will be changed, but it has no paper caps( a couple of black beauties though). Most of the caps it contains look like the predecessor of the "orange drop" type of caps and are a sort of dark chocolate brown in color.

My first inclination is to replace them all and be done with it. I don't like the idea of going through the entire set, doing all of the restoration work on it only to find that there are other problems relating to leaking or open caps and have to yank it out of the cabinet umpteen times trying to troubleshoot it. But there are two potential problems with that scenario....first there's always the possibility that a cap could be installed wrong or something around it could be disturbed or damaged in the process. And number two is that some of these caps have very strange values. The replacements might not be close enough to the original value.

What's the general consensus about cap replacement?

Thanks!
Bob.