RCA CTC? Table top with rolling cart

[Electronic M]

Originally Posted by freakaftr8

So video peak has to do with the amount of "pop" contrast between the whites and colors in the background? I have to look again, but I thought it ascs more like a sharpness control.

Visually it can have a sharpness effect.

An important thing to have right to get the most out of good alignment/peaking is focus. If focus is less than razor sharp fine detail is lost in a spot size greater than the size of said detail bleeding it's edges into adjacent phosphor. If you take a basically working set with lousy focus and fix the focus that alone can unlock performance you weren't expecting.

Some peaking coils were wound on resistors in the 10k ohm ball park (they made for cheap forms with integrated leads. I haven't looked at the CTC16 recently enough to see if this is the case, but in some circus it is possible for the coil wire to go open and the resistor to still be okay...in some circuits it is possible for the video chain to limp along like that with reduced contrast, brightness, and or detail....Sam's should list peaking coil resistance (it is usually not more than 2 ohms) and there is no harm in taking a DMM in ohms mode to your peaking coils if you think one is bad.
Stuff like that I see wrong more often with 50's sets especially ones with those elliptical chalk blob peaking coils that RCA and Motorola liked.