Does your transistor socket look like this?
Personally, before I ever put the iron to the board, I check fuse values and then put a meter across the various test points and look for any erroneous voltages.
That's gotta be one of the best hacks I've seen in a long time 
My god man! what was this person thinking?
a socket on a transistor
Just asking for trouble in my opinion
I can see how they came up with the idea.
there are transistor sockets available for TOP3 style transistors but the transistor is held in place with screws.
also years ago there where sockets available for some low current type transistors.
whats next? lets put sockets on our diodes and standard resistors.
you would be lucky if the current rating on that socket would be 1 amp, and how many amps does the device that transistor controls use?
