[morzh]

Well, I did make another short when I recapped. This is the second; the first one was, as I wrote before, when I shorted out 8uF cap. That is.....the radio relies on the formed leads not to bend and touch stuff, but they do bend and touch. That resulted in 10K (the first RC after 600 ohm main filter resistor) smoking.

This time it is along this same filter, only this was a solder short. The two pins of the switch used as solder posts, one is grounded and one is nearby. Happened to solder to it, shorting the 33K/33nF RC filter for the 1st AF amp (ECC81 second half) to GND. It is the point where 33nF, 33K and 22K tube's load resistor come together.

Funny thing it did work. Not sure how.....I guess the grid capacitively coupled into the plate.
Now that I fixed it, it sounds much better.
However the howling did not go away.
I found this short while tracing the feedback from the transformer secondary. Saw something that did not make sense.

Now I have to see if I did swap the plates. I doubt it, I checked and re-checked by the photos I made.

One more possibility is, if the full acoustic system is not plugged in, maybe that affects the frequency response.

I tried it once, but then I did have that boo-boo with shorted power to the AF Amp.