Hi Doug (drh4683),
This is only a hunch, but that sound you were hearing from your '61 Magnavox TV's speaker may have been something oscillating somewhere--maybe one of the video IF stages or even the 4.5-MHz sound detector went into regeneration, but it's difficult to say from this distance.
However, your set's picture looks good now. It's great when you can get an old set like this working that well. I haven't seen any of the early '60s Magnavox sets, especially with large screens (except one white French Provincial remote set), on this forum lately until now; most sets with the Magnavox name on them are made by Phillips today, and are of much lower quality than the originals--in fact, from what I've seen and read, the newer Maggies are built so cheaply (offshore, like everything else these days) it isn't funny. No wonder these sets (as well as the Thomson-built RCAs and GS-built Zeniths) wind up in the trash so often these days when they go bad (especially after a CRT failure.)
One question, though. Why on earth would anyone keep a TV set from 1961 in their living room for 43 years if the set isn't working, and possibly hadn't been working for years or decades?
What did they use that Maggie for, anyway? You said there was a lot of "silverware junk" on top of it. I can only guess. . . .
BTW, the loose CRT base, not to mention the other circuit problems you found, doesn't surprise me in a set that old. It's a good thing you cemented it back on before it came off entirely, as when you lose the base on one of these tubes, you have a big job on your hands if you have to replace it. I once had a Philco Microgrid "390" 21-inch b&w console with the same problem, only the base came off in my hand one day while I was working on the chassis. I managed to solder the leads from the chassis to the wire stubs at the end of the CRT neck and get the set working for awhile, but eventually one lead broke off, shorted across a couple others, and of course it ruined the tube immediately.
I don't know what it did to the rest of the set, but at that point it didn't matter anymore as I had to get rid of it anyway (I moved a few months later, so had to get rid of every one of my old TVs, including that Philco and a 23" Zenith b&w console, in a hurry).
Kind regards,