I can relate to where the OP is coming from....
I am for sure not a tech by definition.... As today I managed to burn an amp. 
Couldn't tell you what went wrong, but 100% on me as I was doing my best to follow instructions but something went wrong.
On a good day, I know not to clip limiters and turn the AMC potentiometer all the way up. 
I actually was able to bring back a Cobra 148 GTL a friend gave me while in Nevada. Though he only said it had a bad final, it turns out that though it was missing, someone connected the radio backwards and burned up some stuff inside. Replaced the diode, put in a new fina, set the driver/final bias, and she was singing once again...
At the end of the day, lets not look into this too far in. My old man was a mechanic for a local cattle lot for the last 30+ years, and barely retired as of last December.... No certificates and nothing to show on pen and paper, but he sure does a hell of a job on repairs on the old farm trucks and equipment. Countless times when stuff was brought in from other ranches to see if he could fix it, and nailed it every time on what was wrong. My favorite one I recall years ago was when they brought in a belly dump to see on why it wasnt opening up... My old man grabbed a multimeter and poked around for a couple minutes, and told them they have a bad ground connection... Cleaned up the connection for it and whala! It works again...
Is he a mechanic? I consider it and whomever knows him, but to the rest of the world he is not.
Lets all enjoy the radio and keep doing what we can to fix them.
