JC Penny Penncrest

[old_coot88]

Originally Posted by TUD1

I wouldn't run it with the brightener. They accelarate the degradation of the cathode extremely quickly. .

Our experience was the exact opposite.
Back in the day when CRT 'restorers' like the Beltron first came on the market, a big deal was made of how "restoring" was fundamentally different than the older "rejuvenating" process. Rejuving or "shooting the tube" was brute force stripping of the cathode, while restoring was a more benign "boiling" of the cathode surface to bring up more of the underlying emissive material. The restore process had to be scrupulously time limited to prevent destroying the cathode.
I often wondered how much of a real difference existed between rejuving and restoring.

One thing we learned early on was to never rejuv or restore a CRT in the customer's home, because the tube would almost always be flat again in a week or two. Learned this the hard way when a competing shop came in and hung a brightener on the tube, which brought it back up again. And the customer called up raising hell. Afterward, we always gave the customer the choice of a brightener or CRT replacement, but never a rejuvination or restoration.

A brightener will almost always give the jug a few more months of useful life.

[MadMan]

Originally Posted by old_coot88

One thing we learned early on was to never rejuv or restore a CRT in the customer's home, because the tube would almost always be flat again in a week or two. Learned this the hard way when a competing shop came in and hung a brightener on the tube, which brought it back up again. And the customer called up raising hell. Afterward, we always gave the customer the choice of a brightener or CRT replacement, but never a rejuvination or restoration.

A brightener will almost always give the jug a few more months of useful life.

Ah... the difference between providing service to customers, and fixing something for yourself. Example, I would never sell a customer just brake pads. Because their rusty old rotors would just start squeaking in a couple weeks, and I'd have to deal with a disappointed customer and lose repeat business. Customers get pads and rotors or nothing. But if it's my car, I'll throw some pads on it and live with a minor squeak, because I know it's gonna work just fine. Well... provided the rotors are still somewhat ok.

You get the point. This old set probably won't see all that much more service anyway.