[Charlie]

This is one of those topics that comes up time and time again.

As far as whether or not to change ALL caps, it's just one of those personal preferences. Seems that everyone here at AK has a different idea on this (which is to be expected in a group as large as we are). There are some of us (myself included) that feel changing everything is the best bet. That way, it's likely you won't need to pull the chassis again anytime soon. True, it's not always necessary, but I guess it's like buying an insurance policy.

It's just a judgement call one makes. For instance, the Motorola I just finished still has all of the ceramic tubular caps in it. I changed only the electrolytics in the cans. The tubular caps all checked out like new.

It also makes sense that changing only the lytics could cause old couplers (especially paper/wax & blk beauties) to fail. The fresh new B+ voltages you get by changing weak lytics will likely seek out and destroy any weak couplers.

Your question of whether or not cans fail first... well, it's a coin toss. All depends on how much the set was used and whether or not it had any other problems that could put a strain on them.