Your tech is correct, these amps were notoriously unstable in design, way too fast in bandwidth for their own good, out to 5mhz.
When they went up they took half the neighborhood with them.
You could think you repaired it all go to turn on, even with a variac and Chernobyl will follow yet again without notice.
He advised you correctly to cut your loses and get rid of them.
Cheers George