Please forgive my ignorance here, im just getting into these. With radios, im mediocre, but tv's are still complete magic to me.

I figured id start the recapping on my 1950 motorola this month. Picked up a sams photofact for it already. But if the crt is dead..well..

I read on here and now cant find it, a simple test for seeing if theres at least some life left in your crt. It was akin to hooking a 6 volt battery up to say pin one and six, seeing if it lights up.

If anyone can help me out here, id be really appreciative.

and if it fails well.. i guess ive a nice cabinet and rust free chassis for free then.

That will only tell you if the filament in the crt is good, chances are it is. Usually when crts fail its due to low/no emissions.
I would recommend investing in a crt tester, you can pick them up off ebay for almost nothing. It could save you a ton of time.
What is the crt number?

well its a 12LP4A.

Since all these crt testers are so old, wouldnt they be suffering from the same problems that many old electronics have? Circuitry going or already gone out?

True, but there's not much to the early models really. Maybe just a couple of capacitors to replace and controls to clean.

Here's the pinput for a 12LP4: http://www.bunkerofdoom.com/tubes/syl59/data/crts/12LP4.jpg

The filament is between pins 1 and 12. That's either side of the key on the base. Check for continuity between those pins. It should be a very low resistance.


P.S.
I'll haul my Motorola chassis out in a few days and we can compare notes.