Seems the 700B is OK. I did what I do best and assumed....that since rotating the preamp's volume control did not increase or decrease the spurious noise, that the cause must be within the power amp.
I disconnected the PL and placed it where I could keep a convenient eye on it at idle while hooked up to a small pair of speakers. Several hours passed and no noise. I then installed a different power amp in the system and there was the noise. This is somewhat distressing because the preamp I've been using for the past 2 or 3 weeks was the one in which I replaced 41 capacitors and it was fine until recently. My hope is the fact the noise is not affected by the volume control, that it will narrow down where I should be looking for a fault.
That preamp is in front of me as I type this, powered up with a a pair of headphones plugged in and I now know that operating any control or switch does not affect the noise at all. It is sporadic, just on the right channel and nothing increases or decreases it's loudness.
That would appear as either a semiconductor going bad (bad bond wire) or a poor solder joint somewhere in the preamp.