Fair enough. But you will need a grounding in theory too. Reapiring stuff does not mean changing that resistor that burnt out because it will just burn again. Most visual effects of a fault are side effects.
Yes I realize that. I can certainly replace bad caps and resistors but I would like to be able to figure out if there is something else causing them to go bad.
As a beginner myself, I would agree with the comments from the more experienced people here, which is that modern electronics is super complex and aside from replacing bad electrolytic capacitors (which you can generally check with an ESR meter), you need to reverse engineer what is going on with the whole circuit. That is very complicated!
I think it's on par with trying to reverse engineer someone's programming (without programming comments or documentation).
What is worse, is that today they use a lot of ICs that put so many functions inside, it's a black box to us.
Then, they use SMDs which you can barely see.
All on tiny PCBs!
So, it's a real headache trying to figure it all out. Then you need to have the specific part that you think is broken, to replace.
I don't think you can get away from learning the theory. It's like trying to patch up a person's injury without having good medical knowledge. Maybe first-aid, but anything more than that, is almost impossible or just shot in the dark.
That's my perspective now, having gotten a little bit of experience with learning electronics. It's a very fun process though! And if you scavenge parts from electronics that others throw away, you can do it real cheap. You don't even need to print PCBs. You can literally wire things up any way you want. The electrons don't care!
Actually now that I've said that, I suggest you get some desoldering gear. A solder sucker is good (pretty cheap). Later you can get a nice desoldering gun that does the job quicker (with vacuum suction). Soldering wick is good but you can't reuse it. Those solder suckers can be reused (like a syringe that has a spring in it, pretty cheap).