Next time you have a chassis in need, try some Brasso.
Last summer when I got the Fisher tuner I Brasso'd the tube shields just for grins and the results were much better than expected. It's on an aluminum chassis, which did take a shine, but there's no fix for the dull greyness of the metal. If it were nickel plated it could be dazzling. As it stands right now the chassis is a very clean aluminum grey with bright tube shields that look better than new.
This also means that if someone is doing a full teardown-to-the-chassis rebuild and happens to take a steel chassis to a local plating shop the results could be whatever melts your Kester 44.
In other news, the cleaning continues and I found three power amplifier modules that came out of Rat Shack's parts dump in Foat Wuth in the mid 80's. Probably paid two bucks apiece for them 'cuz they're on a super-heavy heat sink. Anyway, imagine a sink approximately 6" square and 4" deep. Heavy aluminum, deep fins, PC board on one side and one each of 2SK134 and 2SJ49 on the other side. This is a complementary pair of 100 watt Hitachi VMOS FET's in TO-3 packages and completely discontinued.
Did some web crawling last night and was amazed to find these are a hot item among audiophiles. Allegedly the newer versions don't sound as good. Plenty of schematics for them and NOS originals can still be purchased for a paltry $100 each (average) if you're lucky.
Whoa...........................!
Who Knew?