[julianburke]

Actually I don't need one. I was only being like "well join the club" as I'm sure everybody wants one too. He wants one that is 100% new, not rebuilt. I wonder if any such exists as all the new ones were used in the production of new TV's. Normally rebuilt ones were used for replacements as if your CRT would fail under warranty, a rebuilt CRT was usually used for replacement under in the terms in the warranty. **Read the warranty for such replacement under RCA's options** After CTC5's ceased production, new CRT's ceased production fairly soon after but there were plenty of spares and duds out there to keep up with the demand. Also RCA recommended using 21FB's for replacement of the 21AX's and I have seen plenty of evidence of that in the past. At the last Early Television Foundation pow wow, Steve auctioned off a "NOS" 21FB that was a factory rebuilt.

I do have a "NOS" 21FJP22 factory sealed RCA tube and on the box it says that it is a tube "prior to reuse, it was carefully inspected and the gun assembly is new." The tubes that failed under warranty were all sent back and rebuilt that were good candidates for rebuilding. Actually a rebuilt tube went through the same process as a new one and should be a better tube but I am sure that is a toss up.

Actually, in my opinion the CTC5 (for the time) was a pretty reliable set, gave fewer problems than the next few generations of color sets and when properly set up made very nice color. You seldom ever replaced a flyback in one and didn't burn up horiz output tubes like the next four generations of the vertically placed chassis sets when the coupling cap supplying the drive would fail which was a common problem.