I like to fix them, not so much for the cost, but for the joy that saving something from going to the trash (landfill, incinerated/etc) gives me.
This wasteful society that makes things designed to fail in order to sell more disgusts me.
I've fixed a dozen and I've never seen the electrolytic capacitor die!
Its usually the tube died, or much more frequently, a very crappy ?polyester? green capacitor, supposedly 1000V that sits between the two filaments that shorts out!
It's function is to pass current through the 2 filaments during the heating phase, and then, the frequency changes, the tube presents a lower impedance and current starts to flow trough the tube and not trough the filaments and capacitor.
When it fails shorted, the current is always flowing trough the capacitor and filaments, and if it's left on, it leads to the blackening of the end of the tubes because of filament burn out.
These are the capacitors I was talking about:
![](http://us.100y.com.tw/product_jpg_original/A002737.jpg)
You guys blaming the poor electrolytics... It's not always them!
Do you believe me if I tell you I have fixed a laptop motherboard with a shorted ceramic capacitor? Who had thought, right?
I've carefully dis-soldered every electrolytic from the bus and the sort was sill there!
Then I remembered of the ceramics! bingo!
Usually on old CRT TV I've fixed, its a resistor or a ceramic capacitor damaged, more rarely it was an electrolytic,
It goes against what I've read everywhere: "electrolytics are the fist to fail", but it's my personal experience.
Please take some time to watch this, there is proof that manufacturers of incandescent bulbs agreed to intentionally shorten their lifespan.
As for the CFLs life, I wouldn't be surprised if something like this is going on with CFL's as well.