Learning How to Test Tubes with Sencore - A Few Questions
 

Okay, I've always been intimidated to start looking into the technical stuff, but tonight I've set out with the goal of testing a few CRTs that I've had for a while.

I have a Sencore CR7000 and I've already put it through a field test. Everything looked good except that the filament voltage could be more accurate, but I can use a multimeter to make sure that's where I want it for now.

I would like to test the tube in a BVM, but first I was going to do a couple of much cheaper TVs. I started with an old Panasonic Quintrix. The first issue I ran into was the labeling of the pins. Everything is fine except for the filament. There is no F1 and F2, just H and H. How do I know which one is F1 and F2 or does it matter?

I hoped the book would clear this up for me, but the numbers it gives for the pins do not match the ones on the neckboard. It even has a pin 10 and there is no pin 10 on this tube. Am I reading something wrong? If I can't trust the book to be right about the pins, should I trust it to be right about the settings for voltage and bias? I'd be particularly nervous of using the wrong settings when connecting to the BVM tube.

Progress has been made. I realized that the numbering in the manual was right from a certain point of view. It didn't match the manufacturer's numbering on the neckboard and it also assigned numbers to pins that weren't there, but I figured out what it was going for and I have thus far tested two tubes!

One thing I'm not entirely clear on. After I test the cutoff and low tracking, do I leave the cutoff knobs where they are when I adjust to emissions and high tracking? I'm thinking I'm supposed to leave them where they are but the manual isn't explicit on this.

Okay, so I made it as far as testing the tube for the BVM as was my goal. My main concern was shorts and I didn't see anything indicating shorts either G1 or H-K shorts.

One thing that I did note however, is that on the cutoff and low tracking test, the voltage seemed to slowly drop. It was appearing to get a little more steady over time, but I wasn't sure how long it was safe to leave the tube hooked up to the tester. I know that you're expected to leave the monitor on for 30 minutes before doing any calibration, so it does take a long time to warm up.

Would a meter slowly dropping during the cutoff and low tracking test be of concern? Should I let this test run longer to see if the tube eventually stabilizes after warming up?

I just realized that I made this thread in the wrong category. Would it be possible to move it to the diagnostic and test equipment category?