You might do a dissection, as Nigel suggests, just to see what's in there..
Eyes On can sometimes clear up a lot of mystery.

I have seen old resistors that were a combination of resistance wire and
carbon, but your example could be something else that's interesting.

--
Cheers,
WB
..............


"JW" wrote in message
...
Here's one I haven't seen before. Bought an EDC (now Krohn-hite) 521 DC
calibrator on the surplus market that was blowing fuses. There were two
power supplies that seemed to be causing the problem +-150V. Turns out
that there were two 22K 2W carbon comp resistors that are used as bleeders
across the two 470uF filter caps. Both had changed resistance - one was
about 2K, the other was 150 ohms! I've seen carbon comps drift, but never
saw ones that drifted *that* far. Also, in circuits like this where they
are dissipating over a watt, they usually drift high; at least in my
experience...

Well, after replacement it seems to be working well. May need a
calibration though.