The amp has been running and sounding fantastic ever since I re-tried it a couple of months ago. From what I was told, everything in the amp is original, including the tubes. After my experience mentioned in the original post, I'm very leary of using anything but NOS tubes when the time comes. I just hope I can find some good ones before these need replacing. The amp sounds so sweet now that at this point I've pretty much adopted the mindset of "if it ain't broke don't fix it." It seems alot of people say the caps and such NEED to be replaced, but I'm afraid if I get someone to work on it, some of the original magic could be lost. Does anyone know how long this beauty might run without any work being done on it?

Theo