Tube Brightener

[Platefire]

 I know, you was thinking why in the world would you want your tube brighter??? So yeah, I'm really talking about a TV picture tube brightener. I bought a GE Tube Caddy years ago that had various vintage tubes and parts in it that became my tube stash container, pictured below.

There were two parts in there that I didn't know what was but I kept them. Today I was going through the caddy and seen them and decided to do a search on them. Turns out if I'm interpreting it correctly, it's an attachment you hook on to the pin connectors of your picture tube when it was getting old and dim to brighten it up.


Then I begin to remember that the picture tube was the most expensive part on the TV and would pretty much warrant buying a new TV rather than replacing it. Now I remember that when you call a TV repairman they would do, I think? something called shooting the tube where they did something to reinvigorate the picture tube that sometimes would make the picture clearer and last a little longer. I don't remember the brightener circuit connector that you attached to the back of the picture tube pins, but here in my catty there are two of them. Yes when the picture tube would start to go out, you would go to extra measures to get a little more life out of it, because a new TV was a major investment back then. Now we just Chunk-um


If I got it all wrong, maybe someone can straighten me out

[sluckey]

I bought a GE Tube Catty years ago that had various vintage tubes and parts in it that became my tube stash container, pictured below.

It's pronounced Tube Caddy. 

There were two parts in there that I didn't know what was but I kept them. Today I was going through the catty and seen them and decided to do a search on them. Turns out if I'm interpreting it correctly, it's an attachment you hook on to the pin connectors of your picture tube when it was getting old and dim to brighten it up.

Very common in the early '60s B&W years. There was usually a couple brighteners in every tube caddy. It was an affordable quick fix that sometimes worked for a short while but not too often. Worth a try though.

something called shooting the tube where they did something to reinvigorate the picture tube that sometimes would make the picture clearer and last a little longer.

It's called rejuvenate the picture tube. It would sometimes buy you a few more episodes of Bonanza.
 

[Platefire]

Well I tried Caddy first and it classified it a mis-spelled so I tried Catty and it liked it, so I went with that. Always been a bad speller even with spell check

I threw away a big box of NOS TV tubes several years back when I got tired of storing themand couldn't find no one who wanted them


On the picture tube brighteners, if I understood it right, the clamp on circuit would boost the filament voltage a couple of volts and make it brighter??

[sluckey]

On the picture tube brighteners, if I understood it right, the clamp on circuit would boost the filament voltage a couple of volts and make it brighter??

yes

[PRR]

Well I tried Caddy first and it classified it a mis-spelled so I tried Catty and it liked it...

I'll be darned! FireFox spill-chucker does object to "caddy"!

And yet:

Scotland : one who waits about for odd jobs
 one who assists a golfer especially by carrying the clubs
 a wheeled device for conveying things not readily carried by hand
 a luggage caddie
 a small box, can, or chest used especially to keep tea in
 a container or device for storing or holding objects when they are not in use
 a caddy for pens
--Merriam-Webster

Firefox (and Chrome!) are just wrong about this.

FF accepts "caddie" variant but that is rare, "too fancy", in US use.

[shooter]

I was a caddy!  2 years at a country club 


I also got my 1st REAL bite using one of those pigtails. GLNB had an electronics shop, pay a couple bucks an hour, get a bench loaded with test equipment.

[Platefire]

For some reason I remember taking old junked tube TV's to the dump and shooting the picture tube with a 22 to see if the picture tube would explode or not


Our little small town of Zwolle had a open dump about 3 miles out of town on a back road where everything was dumped out on a hillside and every now and then a Bulldozer would show up, push up and burn. If you wanted to scavenge, that was the place to do it. I didn't scavenge but I did go there to target practice with my Remington single shot bolt action 22. Lot of cans and bottles to shot at. If I had been into electronics like I am now, I would definitely been scavenging there for old discarded tube amps

[shooter]

i did the same thing, only with a BB gun.  our "local dump" had anything that you couldn't burn in the backyard.  13 share-cropper type homes would toss appliances, cars, bikes.  I'd grab as many tools as I could, spend the day disassembling ANYTHING with a nut or bolt, that was my "Disney-land" from normal life.  built my 1st bike from the discards, looked like Jonny Cash's "one piece at a time retirement caddy" 

[sluckey]

For some reason I remember taking old junked tube TV's to the dump and shooting the picture tube with a 22 to see if the picture tube would explode or not

There is no pressure inside a CRT so they can't explode. The vacuum inside the CRT will cause the tube to implode. Sometimes the implosion is great enough to suck the neck of the tube out through the front, and that kinda looks like an explosion.

[Platefire]

It's amazing the stories and rumors that use to go around and TV Picture tubes was one of them. The saying was watch playing around with them, if you dropped them they could blow up and kill ya. So standing way off and shooting a picture tube was pretty disappointing. Yes a vacuum will implode instead of exploding---but if a childhood friend told you, it had to be true

 
I remember one of my friends told me if you get cut with the glass from a florescent light tube it was sure death, there was nothing they could do for you


First time I heard a jet break the sound barrier, I was home alone and called our neighbor because I thought it was Atomic Bomb going off. That was during the Cold War and some people were building bomb shelters, Cuban Missile Crisis and all that. Lot of stuff to be careful of back then    

[shooter]

First time I heard a jet break the sound barrier,

my 1st was straight from the movie TopGun; playing war games in the Med, I had just "killed" 3 Tomcats that were flying 50ft above the waves, mach 1.1. 2 broke off like they should, the 3rd kept coming, I lit him up again with the CW radar (The beam the missile ride on), told a funky to keep the track and ran outside just as the Tomcat rolled sideways, and dropped below the speed of sound about 100 ft away, he lit the afterburners and shot straight up. felt like a pro boxer ran my bell!! 

[Platefire]

Yelp! That kind of action will be fixed in your mind forever>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Got taken to the Blue Angels Air Show a couple of times way back when----the stunts they domake you feel they gonna crash any second and your going to be right in the middle of it