Well...it's been a tough few months here. To add insult to injury my VA 62 has decided to stop working. The unit blows the 1 amp line fuse immediately upon power up. Any suggestions on where to start, besides just throwing my hands up in disgust?

Check for shorts at the plug with a DMM in ohms mode. If resistance is reasonable check the lytics on the rectified secondary (s)...If any of those lytics are shorted or very leaky they could pop the fuse.

You may want to check the diodes on the power supply board to see if any have shorted. If so, then it may be a filter cap.

And the pass transistor in the front panel DC bias supply - been there done that. Most likely though is the low voltage rectifiers someone mentioned earlier.