[Ron Ramirez]

This morning, a new idea occurred to me - since Q1 and Q2 reside in sockets and are not soldered in place, why not switch Q1 and Q2 and see what happens?

So, I did.

In doing so, I caught a serious mistake I had made - I had installed the (incorrect) replacement for Q2 incorrectly. Amazingly, the NTE123 equivalent is still good - and when I had both reinstalled in the sockets opposite where they had been, I turned the thing on - and was immediately blown away by loud music from both channels!

So, now that I know it is OK, I can proceed with new electrolytics - and I will still purchase a new 2N2924 since the transistor now in the Q1 socket is not an equivalent transistor.

This is going to be a really nice unit.

Thanks to everyone for the help. And I will still order the manual.