[miniman82]

Well after talking it through with my brother (he's an electrical engineer), we ended up discovering that the burst amp tube's plate voltage was high by at least 100 volts. Turns out that either the factory, or more likely a misguided tech, had mistakenly wired the plate to the +385v supply rail, vice the 270 one it was supposed to be fed by. After flipping to the next page of the RCA service manual, it instantly became obvious why this was done. On one page, there is the schematic for the 7 A-F versions of chassis. On the very next, there is the 7N and P versions. The N and P's do in fact have the burst amp plate wired to +385, but that would not be correct for my chassis. My best guess is someone in the past flipped to the wrong page of the same manual as I have, and thought they saw an 'error'.

I corrected the wiring, but it made no difference. I still have the bars going through the picture, and nothing will make real color snap in.

I can try the crystal from my other chassis, but the last 3 times I saw this issue pop up on different chassis the crytal didn't fix anything- anything is possible I guess. Here's what I'm seeing at this point.