The Zenith/LG tube debacle--ON PURPOSE?

[radiotvnut]

I remember reading somewhere that the the factory where the tubes were made was not nearly as clean as it should have been and the contamination had a lot to do with these tubes failing.

I've worked on a few '90's Goldstar TV's that had the same crappy Zenith CRT's in them.

The main problem these tubes gave was intermittently shorting/arcing; which, would often take out the power supply and/or video output components. You could fix the chassis and the set might work for a minute, hour, day, week, or month and then the tube would arc and blow up everything that was replaced. The tubes also got weak way too quickly. In fact, I've seen brand new sets that looked like the tube was bad right out of the box. I can also tell you that the replacement tubes were no better. Generally, the only time the CRT was replaced was under warranty. Usually, when the tube failed out of warranty, the set was junked.

Starting in about '98, Zenith started using a mix of LG/Philips and RCA/Thomson bonded yoke CRT's; but, by that time, the damage had been done and in '99, LG took over Zenith totally. Personally, I've not seen a bad Philips or Thomson tube. I know of a couple of Zenith consoles from the early 2000's that are still in service. They contain non-Zenith CRT's and they still look fine.