larry moe 'n curly wrote:

When I come across a burnt resistor, I usually replace it with one
rated for twice the wattage as the original, but I was told it's
sometimes bad to do that. Why? I'm not referring to fuse resistors
but ordinary carbon composition resistors.

Resistors mostly cook due to two reasons -

1) Under-specked. Runs too hot for the application.
Good idea in this case.

2) (Most common reason) Something else failed
and pulled excessive current through the resistor.
If you replace just the resistor, and use a higher
wattage part, you might cook other (more expensive)
stuff.

Lord Valve
American - so far