Thank you for the great suggestion! Another newbie question- What is the left to right orientation of this resistor? or any resistor for that matter?
Polarity doesn't matter with resistors.
That said, old resistors are far more durable than old capacitors.
Yes, indeed and, especially in tube equipment, resistors that have drifted upwards in value, even to several times their original value, will seldom make the apparatus totally not work. It may not work
well, but it will usually at least do
something.If you still have original capacitors in that thing, they deserve to be checked first. Especially if you're trying to make a non-working unit work.
Yes, most certainly! Old capacitors are often bad to the point of causing something to not work at all or even cause severe, permanent damage like burning out an otherwise good transformer winding or blowing up rectifiers, simply due to a shorted capacitor.
The
OP should also note that many types of capacitors are polarized, so you need to be careful with those to be sure you get them the right way around when it matters, but with resistors it never matters.
Tubes, and I presume you have at least one, tend not to be affected much by simple age, and are probably as good as they were the last time the unit was used.
Indeed. Unless something like storage in wet conditions has corroded the pins, worked its way up and destroyed the glass-metal seal around the pins, tubes don't really "age" when being stored and not in use. When they
are powered up, you're slowly using up the cathode's ability to emit electrons and slowly wearing out the heater or filament, but when un-powered in reasonable storage conditions, they should last virtually forever.
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Good points for the
OP. Thanks
Nusa!