Hmm, what does "restored" mean? To me it involves a thorugh cleaning. In most cases replacement of all the lamps, Then set all adjustments to factory spec. Bench test for a couple of hours, then verify the adjustments again. Finally run it for a sufficient period to feel confident that nothing is going to smoke. I think there is a picture of my workbench in a thread hear somewhere, but let's just say that a lot of my eBay gains have been ploughed back into test gear.
I only change caps if they are bad and are causing some problem, such as the protection circuit not working, or noisy circuits somewhere. Since I deal mainly with Yamaha I find this to be OK as they used high quality parts.
Next comes the case, if the imitation woodgrain is bad then I recover them with that heavy weight vinyl from PE. If the case is from the high end (CR-1020, CR-2020) where it was real wood veneer and able to be re-finished (and needs it) I strip the finish, sand lightly then apply four or five coats of oil.
I realize that you cannot return these units back to their state when they were first un-boxed by the original owners, but I try to come as close as I can. This is also one of the reasons that you will seldom see me bidding on a working unit since I am not a collector, although I do keep a few units. I do love those auctions where the seller says "The lights are out but they are easy to replace." My ass, for example I can only get bare lead lamps so they must be spliced to the ends of the existing wires and covered with heatshrink. Well the lamp that goes into the dial pointer does not have room for stiff heatshrink. I cover the bare wires for an inch or so with insulation from some Kynar wire I have, it is like threading a needle only moreso. This puts the splice and the heatshrink outside of the dial pointer lamp pocket.
Rob
