[RitchieMars]

I found that the bending a the top of the screen doesn't occur on the cable channels, so I'm thinking it's definitely the VCR. Also, that double horizontal image only happened with those cartoon tapes. Later I turned the set back on to show a friend, and I didn't get that problem then, either.

As for the brightness and contrast, I can get the screen to become fairly bright by cranking up the brightness... but increasing the contrast virtually does the same thing. It just becomes brighter until everything is barely recognizable. Turning up the screen register does the same, and I've tried various combinations with only a few rather poor compromises. The only way I could get decent contrast was to turn the screen register way down and then turn up the brightness, and the contrast would improve somewhat. However, turning the screen register down increases the buzz so badly that the image begins to jitter horizontally. So, the pictures I took appear fairly dark because I have the picture set to the best compromise between picture and sound.

I have three NOS 6CB6 tubes on the way for the IF section ( GE brand for $1 a piece ) and I'm hoping that might help the buzz at least. I had just read somewhere that a washed-out, low-contrast image was sometimes the result of a bad video amp tube. So, unless there's no truth to this, I might consider picking up another 12BY7.