"Old Sparky" (CTC-31)

[bgadow]

Earlier in the year I worked on this CTC-31, finally giving up due to intermittent arcing in the area of the burst amp/color crystal. The last suggestion made here was to check for bad solder joints, especially the larger grounds. Well, restless, I pulled it back out Sunday & went to checking those joints. Nothing real bad, some sort of looked marginal so I fixed 'em up. The burst phase coil had previously gone open and I replaced it; I suspect this arcing took it out, and while I have a couple spares I don't want to kill one for nothing. There is a big ground trace beneath it so for good measure I ran an extra wire off it to the chassis. Everything looks to be in order. So I fired it up and as soon as the switch was turned on-LIGHT SHOW! I narrowed this down to the area underneath and between the blanking amp & the video output. I pulled off the rear panel for a better view, and have not ran it for more than a second-hard to get a closer look. Once when I turned it on I got no spark, just smoke, smelled like wax, but I could not find anything hot. (no paper caps in this set) The next time I flipped it on, fireworks again. From seeing/hearing it, this is a pretty good voltage arcing. There are some things I can try (seeing what it will do with hv disabled, with normal/service switched to service, pullling tubes, etc.) but does anyone here have any good ideas? One thing I notice on this set that I don't recall running into before are spark gaps, lots of them, either alone or as part of disc caps, but I can't say thats related to anything here.