Sometimes it doesn't pay to disturb things that are functional and solid even though they may look bad. However there appears to be an original wax covered paper type capacitor in there. That should have been replaced. Now they may have just clipped it out of the circuit. Your radio is old enough that it may be difficult or impossible to get 12v versions of some of the tubes. This is not the case for the 47 to 53 radios. Some of the early 6 v tubes were not produced in the 12 v version.
