[PAradiogeek]

What have I gotten myself into? I've replaced two of the bakelite blocks and things were going swimmingly. Then I decided to alter course a little and now I'm not sure how to proceed. The schematic for this radio shows a capacitor 'item' 7 that is composed of five different capacitors, items 7A through 7E. These capacitors are all placed inside a metal box (shield?) and each of the caps has one end tied to chassis. After getting all full of myself after my second bakelite block replacement, I decided to tackle this beast.

I unscrewed the shield from the chassis, bent back the tabs, and removed the caps from the box. They were wrapped in paper and when I pried apart the paper, I saw this:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/104710683@N04/11459036793/

The caps all seem to be potted together with the same wax used in bakelite blocks. I honestly thought I would find 5 caps soldered neatly to a terminal block (naive?).

So the question is: How do you experts handle a mess like this? The caps, and even the connected wires are all 'glued' together. Should I simply unsolder each wire from it's other end, toss out the whole mess, then install new caps and then string new wires? Some other plan of attack?

Also, is the box important to the circuit? I.e. is it in fact a shield, or just a method of grounding one side of each cap?

Thanks,
Jon