[Techman]

Saying replace ALL the capacitors is a very dangerous thing to say to a novice. I can only think that Sideband wasn't thinking when he said that - I know I've probably said things without thinking and caused possible confusion.

ALL the capacitors includes the silver mica types that'll destroy the alignment if they're disturbed for replacement and will need specialised test equipment (which the OP won't have or even be able to afford) to put things right. It also includes the main smoothing can which virtually never fail on this model of radio.

What he should have said was ALL the round, wax paper types that are mainly on the tag board. They will all be faulty as regards having leakage, but it's only really the one feeding the output valve control grid at the end of the board that's critical and should ALWAYS be replaced.

There's a screen grid decoupler on that tag board and just for the hell of it on mine I removed all the solder from one end connection and carefully unwound the wire from the tag and lifted the end of the capacitor away. It measured leaky and I'd previously checked the screen grid voltage while it was still in circuit and it was in the ball-park of what it should be. I tacked a new replacement capacitor in place and it made about half a volt difference to the screen voltage and no noticeable difference to performance, so I unsoldered it and carefully wound the wire of the original capacitor back on its tag and re-soldered the connection.

What I would say is that all those half dozen or so round wax paper capacitors on that tag board WILL be leaky to some degree and it could be that if the radio has spent many years in a damp shed or similar place, then the absorption of moisture and leakage of all of them could be enough to compromise the performance of the radio, so it wouldn't be too bad a thing to replace them as well as that critical one at the end, but it's easy to make mistakes when replacing a group of components in one go.

What you need to do, seeing as it sounds like the radio has already been powered up, is to disconnect that wax cap by the on/off switch and on top of the chassis (if it's still there) and then replace just the grid coupling capacitor. If the set still doesn't work, then it's time to do proper fault finding by taking voltage readings as a first start.

Be very careful around high voltages and remember that one side of the mains goes straight to the chassis metalwork on these particular sets!