[NostalgiaRadioTime]

Thanks so much, Ron, for the help. Sorry for the delay in acknowledging it... a pesky little thing called a job sometimes takes priority over my hobbies

Thanks to your checking, I think I'm in good shape with the current substitutions, tube wise, and I appreciate the link to check on these in the future. Very handy!

As far as the (now) off/on/volume switch in place of the volume only, I think I'm just going to leave it that way. If it works, I guess it doesn't really matter too much if you have to push a button or twist a knob to turn the set on, to me at least.

I did remove the rest of the crumbling red coating and put a piece of heat shrink around that "gimmick" capacitor, all the way to the exposed end of the wire, and put it back in the lug as shown in the picture above. No metal is touching on the lug now, just the now insulated wire. It didn't really make too much difference, but when I touched the lug that was already soldered tight (see photo above), I got lots of volume. I think the real test will be when I hook up the 3 antenna wires in the cabinet to see how that affects volume and sensitivity. Just waiting for the cabinet to cure after applying a wood treatment to it before I do.

I did notice the speaker was somewhat garbled sounding. Will double check the tubes in the audio output section next and see that makes a difference. Good news is I'm making some progress, and want thank you again for your help!