"Peter" bravely wrote to "All" (13 Jun 04 12:21:29)
--- on the heady topic of " unable to fix faulty capacitor? pls help!"

Pe From: "Peter"

Pe OK, replaced the rectifier with the above one from Jaycar, but the
Pe symptoms are exactly as they were before replacing the cap. :-(

Pe A few minutes after turning the piano on, I get a "pop" sound through
Pe the speakers and all goes silent. Turning the piano off and then on
Pe again brings it back to life and it works for a while.
Pe And I can still smell the strong fishy smell coming from somewhere but
Pe I cannot locate it. Very strange. No, I don't have a dead fish in
Pe there :-) It must be some component overheating or leaking, but which
Pe one?
Pe Is replacing all the caps the next step? It seems like hitting a
Pe mosquito with a hammer.

One time when I was stuck trying to find a faulty component my little
girl asked me why I didn't simply replace all the parts in the
affected area. She made perfect sense since it was only a handful of
resistors and capacitors to replace. Sometimes a brute force approach
is more profitable than the actual time invested in troubleshooting.
It's a philosophical point that a professional technician can
appreciate since labour is usually more costly than the parts. And, as
an aside, a defective component tends to stress the others around it
too, for example by overheating them, etc.

A*s*i*m*o*v

.... Real techs don't lick nine-volt batteries!