Zenith 4-tube hybrid Chromacolor questions

[old_coot88]

Originally Posted by Jon A.

Not trying to insult anyone's intelligence here as errors of omission happen, but make sure that's a *grounded* insulated screwdriver.

Nein, Nyet! No need to ground it. Simply hold the screwdriver by the insulated handle. The arc is drawn by the innate capacitance of the screwdriver 'free floating' in the air. The screwdriver is in effect 'grounded' capacitively to RF.
Though this reactive capacitance is very small, the arc occurs because it's driven by high level RF spikes (the 'fly-back' spikes).

I b'lieve maybe you're thinking of grounding a CRT to discharge it.

Originally Posted by RetroHacker

...I was using a high voltage probe, it divides the voltage by 1000 so I can get a reading on my meter without blowing it sky high. So, my reading of .717 volts would indicate 717 volts at that point.

Actually that's just reading the averaged-out DC level at the output terminal of the fly. It won't show the RF spikes riding on top the DC. Those are what the tripler uses to generate the HV for the CRT (stacked on top of the 717 volts).