I used to use Vista in Co Durham, but apparently they are no more. I have a beautiful 32" Toshiba widescreen Dolby Digital TV here needs a CRT (for the second time!) and will sadly end up in a landfill unless I can find a tube for it.
Does anyone know any businesses, preferably in the NE or even Northern England, who still do reguns? Hell, I'd rather give it away for bits than it go to a landfill, the only other failed component is, I suspect, a video amp IC on the CRT base due to flashover. I haven't had time to assess it myself as it was a warranty/insurance job and they've written it off.
The TV is already on its second CRT, a regun. The original CRT failed gradually as the blue crept up over time. The regun was fine for years then suddenly seemed to darken quite a bit. It stayed like that for months then the dreaded flashover / intermittant grid short started. The engineer mentioned that this model (32MW7DB) is known to have a short CRT life.
I'm unsure whether it would be worth chancing a tube hack as I'd have to replace the blown IC and possibly other components to get it working, with a strong possibility that it would happen again. I'm certainly open to your suggestions though. It does switch on, and though the screen is blank, it does show a flash of life at shutdown with a collapsing white raster. There's no sound at all, which the engineer thinks is down to the faulty IC on the CRT base holding a rail down.
If you mean the emission fell thats very fixable, and not with rejuve. Worst set I ever did had emission so bad nothing could be seen on screen, even that one worked afterwards.
If the old CRT would be used to regun, so you cant do anything that would really kill it. But you can risk damaging the gun assembly, as that'll be replaced anyway.
You probably know all this already, but I dont know you so I'll cover the ground in case.
Have you tested the crt flashover voltages between the various grids to find one thats close to operating voltage? If you find one that is, you may be able to nuke it with a big fat cap, or a rejuve on short removal mode, tapping the neck while doing it.
Its bad that flashover kills things, but you can test crt flashover voltage after trying to de-short it, and only reuse it if you're confident in the result.
I dont have any magic suggestions for shorts, other than repeatedly hitting it with a cap while pinging the neck in the hope that a jolt clears it. Since it'll get a new gun assy, you can hit it with as much capacitance as you want, you've got nowt to lose doing that really.
If its shorting to heater thats easily done by using a transformer supply for the heater.
Last thought, but once you know what shorts to what, you could likely put a fairly high resistor in the way for a fixed V electrode. Then if it arcs again the i will be low, and may be taken up happily by the video driver, or whatever its shorting to.
I've probably told you nothing new, but who knows. On a set like that its worth going through the steps to try to clear it. I'm asuming you know for sure the crt is arcing.
Finally if you get the short and driver fixed, low crt emission is very fixable, as long as you dont rejuve it. Repair techs love their rejuves, quick results for a while, but theyre a good way to make tubes unserviceable in a few months time.
I'll have a look at the TV after Christmas and let you know what I find. I presume that one of the tricks the tricks you are referring to to up the emissions is raising the CRT heater voltage?
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