[morzh]

Today I was ready to turn it on.
The AC mating plug for the chassis cannot be easily detached from the back cover so I realized the US plug for some power supplies used today (two-pin female with rounded ends, pluggable into power supplies) would probably fit, and, after trimming some excess plastic, it did.

Upon ramping up the voltage there was no sound, but then I saw smoke.
The smoke was coming from under the audio transformer, and, having exhausting all the tricks to see where it was coming from, and being afraid it was the transformer (which was cool as a cucumber), I removed the transformer.
The smoke was coming from 10K resistor from the 10K/8uF filter.
Then I found a bent lead of a resistor touching the lug and shorting the 8uF cap to the GND. Upon removing that the smoking stopped, and the resistor is still 10K.
I mentioned in the beginning the assembly relies on many leads holding their shapes and not touching stuff with them not being insulated.
But some are really close to other lugs or leads and I expected something like this might happen. Hopefully this is the extent of it, and tomorrow I will replace the transformer and attempt the power-up again.