A couple of things to watch out for on the Bush VHF161/162 and its relations.
1. Decoupling capacitors. Being a well-designed set (apart from the AM aerial tuned circuit coupling, as noted earlier) nearly all of the stage HT feeds are RC decoupled. Open-circuit decouplers are a common problem and can cause loss of stage gain and instability. The worst ones are in the feed to the VHF tuner and the second IF/ratio detector stage. The latter can really damp the detector primary and make its alignment impossible, with attendant distortion.
2. EF89s do lose emission, and they can also develop leakage and grid current. The latter really damps the preceding IFT and can give you similar symptoms to shorted turns in the transformer.
However, get these little sets sorted out and they're fine performers. I use one as our 'house radio' and is used every day.
Cheers,
Neil
