One thing USA Sonys have is AKB ( Automatic Kine Bias ).
With this the grey scale is automaticly adjusted. I wonder if
your set has a slightly weak CRT & that is part of the problem.
If you want to see if it has it you can shrink the vertical & see
if it has 3 color lines at the top. R, G, & B. What they do is fire each
gun, measure it then adjust it during Vert retrace. On US Sonys
a weak CRT will cause the video to blink on & off. This happens
most when cold & gets better with warm up. Eventually the
CRT gets so bad that the set wont get a picture.
I asked Sony about this & they said they dont want a Sony with a bad
pic so at a point it just wont work.
Last thing is a bit risky. There is a resistor in series with the heater
about 1 or 2 ohms 1W. It may be the ones you mentioned. If
you jump it out the heater will go up & we often saved sets
for a few years. There IS the risk of damaging the CRT & loosing everything.
73 Zeno
