I finally stopped recapping everything on sight

Old timer at my shop swore I was making more work for myself replacing every capacitor I saw, and after chasing a ghost voltage on a Samsung TV for 3 hours last week I'm starting to think he had a point. Anyone else have a mentor whose advice you fought for years before it clicked?

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xena_kim4mo ago

My first mentor told me "stop fixing what ain't broken" and I spent 5 years ignoring him. Now I spend half my day just staring at chassis trying to figure out if something's actually bad or I'm just bored.

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hugo_nelson4mo ago

and that staring at the chassis thing is real though. i caught myself yesterday looking at a power supply for 20 minutes just trying to decide if a cap was slightly bulging or if i was making it up in my head. it's like once you stop blindly replacing everything you start second guessing every single component you see. the boredom part hits hard too because sometimes i think i just want something to do with my hands, but leaving things alone when they're actually fine has saved me more time than i ever thought it would. the ghost voltage thing sounds exactly like what i was dealing with, turns out the original cap had a tiny crack that was only showing up under load but visually it looked perfect.

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