Palomar 300a customers had me going for a few minutes

Yeah, another 300a. I know I said I wouldn't, but I said I would take this one on quite a while ago. I have a lot going on personally, and that's why I had recently took my RUclips site here down too. However, even though I am getting older and slower and 'losing' it, I still eat 300a's for breakfast and I was hungry for breakfast so I took this on.
It had been recapped, but it was done badly. Someone had cut the leads coming out the board off at the caps and then soldered the new caps to the old leads. Yeah, that works....usually, but is not optimum to say the least. Hence before I even really dug into it, I ordered and put in another new set of caps the right way. After that, I started checking things out. HV diodes checked good, but both bleeders were bad, open. So bleeders were replaced. Interesting to me that the bleeders in 300a's are in parallel from the HV to ground. This is not optimum for 2 reasons. First is doing it this way, the caps are bled ok, but they are not equalized at all. In almost all tube amps with HV caps in series, which this does have, the amps put equalizing resistors across each cap to help ensure the caps have the same voltage going across them. Not here, the caps are on their own. Reason 2 is that since the bleeder resistors are going straight across the HV to ground, they are carrying the full HV across each resistor. The 300a runs at about 800vdc and since the bleeders are fully across it, then both the bleeders will have 800v's running thru them. The normal better way is to run a bleeder across each cap which would not only equalize the caps, but the voltage across each resistor would be half the HV or 400v per resistor instead of 800v.
This has the new Nomad relay PCB in it. The original relay or keying circuit PCB used odd relays that are now hard to find and expensive. Nomad came up with a plug and play replacement relay PCB that uses common modern relays that are plentiful and relatively cheap. The only negative of the new Nomad PCB is that it does not have a preamp circuit in it at all. Hence, with the new nomad PCB, the preamp is just not going to work. IMHO preamps in these amps are pretty much useless anyway. There is another issue with the Nomad board too, the mounting hole doesn't align with the chassis mounting nut. Its both too far left and too low. Hence, with the new Nomad PCB, I can't get my screw in the hole. This first version already has an update though, where the components on the piggyback board are now all on the main board. I hope the hole alignment has been fixed too.
Still going thru it, pretty much everything else tested ok. Real good tubes, good power supply transformer, coils and variable caps all tested good. Did find some cold solder joints and some loose board mounting screws. The mounting screws is also what grounds the PCB's in this, hence I really thought this amp was going to treat me right on first keyup.
Well, not so fast buddy. It keyed, but wasn't drawing any more amps on the amp meter, and tubes and power transformer where just setting there like they aren't getting any power. Hmmmm. I had checked everything, diodes, new HV shotoff relay, bias, transformer socket/plug connection, what could it be? More checks found the AC HV coming into the RF deck and HV PCB was ok, but no HV out. Well, let me check my newly installed HV shut off relay. Well, that checks OK too. Where could I be losing it?
Well, since I could not trace it down with the power supply PCB mounted, I took it back off and took a good look underneath and it hit my like a lightbulb, there it is.
Someone had cut or scrapped away the traces of the 2 pairs of diodes in series. Above I mentioned that the bleeders are usually in series? Well, the diodes are in series with 2 in series going to + and another 2 in series going to - or ground. Someone had cut out the traces of the 2 in series so there was no connection at all between the 2 sets of diodes in series. With any electrical circuit you need a complete path with voltage coming in and voltage going out. With these diodes, the cut the path of the voltage coming out so the whole HV circuit was open aka dead. Once the path was corrected, away it went. Between the loose ground screws, cold solder joints and diode trace being cut, if this wasn't in my hands and in front of my blind eyes, I would have never figured it out. Thats the problem with trying to help people without seeing the amp or radio in front of you, can be so many different things.