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If your heaters are wired in parallel you want a parallel brightener, if they are series go with series. Don't use one that is an 'isolation' type unless your CRT has a heater-cathode short.
Retrace lines can be an indicator of, but are NOT definitive proof of a bad CRT and can occur in a set with a perfect NOS CRT if the circuits are malfunctioning, poorly adjusted, or poorly designed.
The blanking circuit is usually a resistor/capacitor network going from near the output of one or both deflection circuits to one of the video stages. It feeds back the retrace portion of the pulse to the video stages turning them off HARD on the retrace.
If those parts have drifted in value or failed it can cause retrace issues. Some sets had the circuit, but it was insufficient or ineffective if the CRT emission changed slightly. If your set has an AGC control (when mis-adjusted it can cause retrace lines) I'd try adjusting it in conjunction with brightness and contrast to see if there is a good compromise that reduces retrace lines.
CRT rejuvinators are a mixed bag. The newer/est ones tend to be gentle and some of them are nearly fool proof, but many of the older ones going up into at least the 60's use 'Atomic blast' (modern VK slang) rejuvination circuits that tend to destroy as many tubes as they help...Though dead tubes that the safer rejuvinators can't help sometimes will be fixed by an 'atomic blast' rejuvinators. Rejuved CRT's don't always last some need a mild rejuv every 5 years and it brings them back to like new, others come back to varying degrees and fall back or below what they were at within hours or days.
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