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I think if you're talking about vintage tubes (well, mid 80's and earlier) Zenith is the clear winner. I've seen dozens of weak RCAs from the 60's, 70's and early 80's, but not a single Zenith that wasn't at least usable. Any delta gun CRT should by highly interchangeable as long as it physically fits.
In-line CRTs can be troublesome because the yoke and electron gun have to be designed together for the convergence to work properly. Some swaps work great, others don't. Ususally you end up with the green raster being either too big, or too small vertically if there's a yoke mismatch. Even Zenith CRTs of different types are incompatible (eg. 25" CRTs from the late 80's won't replace a mid 90's CRT). Both convergence and purity are impossible to get perfect. On the other hand, I've put 90's 20" RCA (Thomson) CRTs in Zenith sets from the 80's with no problem at all other than removing the bonded yoke from the RCA. The quality of RCA CRTs definitely went up after Thomson bought RCA. I see a lot with shorts, but if there are no defects like that they last a long time. I've never had any luck swapping yokes from one chassis to the other. You always end up with a picture that way too wide, or narrow.
You can't always go by the brand on the CRT. My Zenith 15Y6C15 has a Zenith branded CRT with an RCA EAI code. I guess it was made before Zenith started maiking 15" CRTs. The CRT looks great too.
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