Hm, I dunno.....nothing that makes a loud POP has
no issues, just ones that haven't surfaced yet

.
Mine popped the moment I plugged it in, but I tried it a second time for the heck of it. After an hour or so of playing, the scenario that I wrote up came to pass.
It just LOOKS like a mess. In reality, to take the chassis out, is a matter of desoldering 4 wires, one spade terminal, and one ground wire (IIRC). The whole chassis HAS to come apart to effectively de-tar the case, and as I'm sure you know, the wires that connect everything together are REALLY short, which ends up making everything look like a jumble once it's all out of the case