I have a great Coronado 83G cathedral radio in a magnificent case. I put in the proper capacitors and it would only play lightly. I tried wiggiling and giggily but to no luck. I 92 year old radio repairman (45 years of actual radio shop work) said he would look at it. He called and said he could not fix it and could not figure out how to make it play. Then he called and said he would try again, but after a couple of weeks, still no luck and he was giving up. He called two days later and said he was going to try again. He called back in a week and said he got it to work. I asked how and he said he eliminated one stage in the 8 tube set up. Now I have an 8 tube radio, with only 7 tubes and it works very well. He put in a generic tube which is not hooked up at all, no filament, no light, nothing.

Hi Del,
That's good that the radios now plays, but not good because it was not repaired right. If possible, he should have shown on a diagram what changes were made to "disable" a section. Then someone could restore that section later on.

Perhaps this is the way some radios were repaired a long time ago, when cost was a factor. Could have been cheaper to bypass a stage than to charge the customer for a more complete repair.
I don't know why your set was not functioning in that one stage, but what component could have been unrepairablem ebough to bypass a stage?
Unless it was in the RF section where an open or shorted coil was unavailable"
Anyhow, good luck!
Gary.