Audio Research Reference 250 capacitor issue

Gpgr4blu ... My plan is to stick too. Will need a retube in my Ref 150 in a couple of months. There's an authorized ARC tech who lives near my house. I may have him do the retube of my amp and to bias the tubes. At the same time, I'll ask him to check the coupling caps.

Just got a free recap on my Ref Phono 2SE. I upgraded from Phono 2 to Phono 2SE, but after some hundreds of hours break-in the white teflon caps sounded dull and liveless.

Brill ... please clarify. Did ARC simply fold on the white Teflon cap issue and replace for no charge the white caps for the new gold foil caps?? No questions asked??

ARC upgraded my Ref 5 to the SE version in 2013 and used the white Teflon caps. By now the Teflon caps are fully broken in. I think the SE version sounds better than the old Ref 5, but how can one tell if the Teflon caps sound dull and lifeless ... as compared to what???

"Dull and lifeless" sounds like a tube issue, not caps.

"Dull and liveless" compared to the sound just after the upgrade, when the phono played wonderfull. After a long break-in it never reached this level again.
Of course I first changed the tubes (both steering tubes and the power tube), but with no result. So probably one or more caps did broke down. After recap (white teflon again) the Phono 2SE worked fine again.