Yeah, I would power it up with some care. At a minimum, make a dim bulb tester. But a Variac is the way to go. Capacitors that have been sitting so long, may not like the surge of power that the transformer will be dumping into them. Would really suck to have a cap go bad and then have it take out other components in its wake.
I was gifted a Marantz 7T that had been sitting for an unknown amount of time not being powered up. Before I switched it on, I replaced the power supply caps with some cheap ones as insurance. That, and as I don’t have a Variac, I used a dim bulb tester as “insurance”.
Clearly, this is an important piece of kit seeing as how it came from your father.
The cost to have it shipped and given a once over by a qualified tech would be money well spent I would think.
It’s a bit irresponsible to suggest firing it up as it’s not a land mine….. People shouldn’t comment on things they don’t know or understand. But that’s easy to do when dealing with someone else’s stuff.