[old_tv_nut]

I seriously doubt that the black to white swing of the video signal on the cathode is only 16 volts peak-to-peak on a normal picture. Could you post the waveform from the manual? I suspect it's for an odd signal that's mostly black. Another clue is that the range of the brightness control is 120 volts. If the usual video was only 16 v p-p, this would mean the brightness control has terrible excess range and would be very touchy to adjust.

Suppose that the video amplitude is a more reasonable 60 V p-p (just a wild stab) and the picture is average (not all white or all black). Then without the DC restorer, the cathode voltage swing at min brightness is from 150 to 90 (120 +/- 30). At max brightness it swings +30 to -30.

Add the DC restorer, and the swing at min brightness is from 120 to 60; at max brightness it's zero to -60.

The offset of the effective bias will be on average half the peak-to-peak (depending on scene content), so to darken the picture back to normal, you need to add about half the normal peak-to-peak voltage to the range of the brightness control.

Edit - for my guessed case, this means the brightness pot needs a range of 150 v to 30 v.