[freakaftr8]

Matt, What you are explaning in where you say the crt has perfect focus then blooms out upon startup. This is usually normal for roundies, my rca does the same thing. Do you have any crawling in the pic, shrunken raster, humming going on? If you turn the contrast down, try to pull in good fucus, turn the contrast back up, check your focus tube, even if it reads good, replace it. Also you could have something going on with a bad cap, like MRX37 said, if this set is that old still running on it's original filters, I would start there! Alot of issues can be fixed when replacing these old can caps! You might even have a better picture than you ever had before! The HV probe goes under the suction cup on the anode lead on the crt. You should have roughly 25kv. BE CAREFUL!!! What I like to do is affix the tip of the probe under the suction cup and then find something to hold it there, power up the set then see what you got, do this after replacing the filter caps..