[TV MAN]

Those sand resistors may just be the culprit. I'll swap those and see how it behaves. They looked & checked pretty good, so I didn't mess with them. I did clean the tube pins and sprayed some deoxit on the sockets - that's when it started smoking. I'm betting there's a carbon track between the pins. It's kinda weird to run into this after all these years. I used to see that on TVs, a certain model or brand comes in and "well, it'll those (blank) replaced or have a bad (?)". This little amp is pushing over 350v in some parts. Pretty stiff for a simple phono. 

I'd like to know the history of these. Most of those suitcase phonos where just rectangular boxes with lids and a player inside. This one has 2 speakers, maybe 3 - I think I remember a tweeter, separate bass and treble controls, external input & output. Even the cabinet has a megaphone wedge shape to it, starting narrower at the back and flaring out at the front. This is not your average suitcase phonograph from the era! This one is designed to put out some serious sound waves!