Rejuvenating the Emperor (CRT)

[Carmine]

Spent some time this morning, hoping to revive the blue gun in the Emperor enough to watch Coronation Street in full color, rather than shades of red and yellow...

As expected, the blue gun tested dead while the others were "ok". So I moved on to the rejuvenate setting (I borrowed Dwight's Heathkit CRT tester/rejuv.).

The instructions have you increase heater voltage until you read 8.5 on the gun scale, then dial heaters back to 6.3v, crank voltage until you see 8.5 on the gun scale again... (repeat three times). If at anytime the "restore" light flashes (rather than slowly increasing in brightness), you must stop immediately.

Well long before I noticed the restore light, I saw the minor fireworks in the tube around 8v on the heater. I repeated a few times with similar results (the restore light did in fact flash).

The problem is, the "gun scale" doesn't even move off the peg, let alone get anywhere near 8.5. The internal fireworks begin long before I see anything on the gun scale. What to do?

Also noticed that the green gun lights much brighter than the other two, as seen here... This is more noticeable on the CRT tester with heaters running at 8v, but occurs when connected to the set too.



After I reconnected the tube, I did notice the green was so much stronger that I had to dial back the drive. Blue is still MIA... Well, not totally dead, but very weak.