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Are you "on the fence" as to wondering if you should try to rejuvinate it or not? I agree that the CRT does seem to be on the "soft" side of things but if it's coming up on brightness and the tracking is good, nowadays that's acceptable.
Lately, I've noticed the hesitating of not rejuvinating tubes and sometimes even living with a brightner. Sure, we look at rejuvinating as the last resort but I believe rejuvination is better than the added stresses of using a brightner. And granted, if a brightner was there to begin with "depending" on how long that brightner was in use the tube may still be salvagable (or not).
Realizing that sometimes a tube can test poor and still produce a good picture, it is always better to see how it does after the set is up and running.
Things sure have changed with no Scotty around anymore!
I've taken various approaches to this. On my Zenith 5131/chassis 25LC30 the CRT will need cateract removal and I did check the tube and it's marginally ok. What I mean by "marginally" ok is that the guns all showed some emission but not all the same, weak with poor tracking. It's got life in it so I know that it will be a good canadate to leave until the set is operational and evaluate then. It will work just fine for producing a picture, and it may "wake itself" up in the process.
Another set that I'm starting on (57' B&W Zenith) had a brightner on it but the tube came up in emission on the tester, indicating some life even before letting it test for a couple hours. I did take my Beltron to this one and now it checks as new. I may have shied away from doing that but this was done as a last rush effort before Scotty shut down so he was my backup.
We've heard that a rejuvinated tube won't last long, picture won't be as good etc. but a CRT won't last very long on a brightner either and then theres no chance of resurrection with a rejuvinator at that point!
The Predicta in my Avatar is the original tube that I rejuvinated with my Sencore (before I got my Beltron) and it's been doing good. Now that I have my Beltron I use it for rejuvinating/cleaning and I like my Sencore for testing.
Dave, I don't want to hijack your thread and I can understand any hesitations where the tube is concerned as to what to do. If your tube continues to maintain the characteristics that it's showing, I'd bet it would respond quite well to a minimum rejuv/clean as your last resort.
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