OK, little update on the tuner fix-attempt:

I took the whole unit apart today and decided to start some trouble-hunting. More to the point, I needed to get the stand-by button fixed anyway, so I figured it would be a good opportunity to do some testing on the tuner section.
So I connected the whole tuner bit up again, did some fiddling about, and discovered that the AM receiver, although working, was refusing to mute itself and was the source of all the AF noise crudding up my inputs. A quick disconnect of the receiver's AF output, and the PH and TP inputs were once again quiet -- and amazingly, I could suddenly receive FM stations even though there was nothing connected to the aerial socket.
2 feet of wire later, and the FM receiver was crystal clear. I believe the AF output of the AM section was contaminating the FM receiver logic, seriously messing up the AGC and AFC, leaving me unable to pick up any stations. Having the AM off the bus, the AFC could kick in like it should, and gave me two nice green lights above the STAND BY button indicating there's a working radio inside ๐
On the downside, I couldn't get the stereo decoder to show any signs of life. The FM output is near perfect, in mono, but the stereo decoder would not lock on any stereo stations. Plugging in the scope, it seems that the local 19kHz oscillator wasn't doing much of anything, at all. I checked all the discretes which make up the oscillator and loop filter sections (they were fine), but as the stereo decoder is right in the tuner's signal path, I might need to write a nice eulogy for this trusty old Motorola TCA4500 that's been splitting up channels for so many years. ๐
Right now I'm stuck with mono, but with a working StandBy button (which wasn't working, I was sloppy at putting the panels together last time, and the front panel didn't contact at the StandBy button) and at least I can tune up some stations without having to zap through my DVR box every time. As for the AM goes -- I might fix that one day, in the future, if there's a threat of a nuclear holocaust! ๐