Nice CTC-16 on eBay

[frenchy]

It's not a problem of general blooming, where the whole screen just expands, blurs up etc. My CTC-5 will do that just cranking the bright too high. On the 16, it's just the 'highlights', like pure bright white letters on a blank screen (I can't even MAKE it do the general blooming, this is one bright tube!) I can tweak around on the AGC and contrast and the video peaking switch to basically make it go away. Anyway, I sort of came to the conclusion it was normal looking in one of my old repair books from 1964 and it said in the real world, the desireable setting of the contrast control was full OFF! I will be getting into tuning it up better in a little while here as far as the HV/efficiency settings. Could use a new HO tube anyway.
One more question - the 'kine gain' switch. If I can get a decent picture with this at it's lowest setting ('up' position) and brightness on full, would this be good for the life of the tube vs. the next switch setting and turning the brightness down? That same book says "keep the kine gain as low as possible for maximum life on the big bottle!". thanks....Frenchy