I had a friend stop in today that sold these sets back when new. He thought the picture looked fine, and that the horizontal shading effect was normal for these CRT's. Some side effect from the shadow mask he thought. Unfortunately I never really payed to close of attention to how the picture looked back when my folks bought it, so I have no clue if that makes sense or not. I sure don't recall seeing any other color set do this though.
Samson, I agree The Worlds Fastest Indian is a great movie.