NotTaR of Television Sets : Shorts in a CRT                         

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Shorts in a CRT

Occasionally, small conductive flakes or whiskers present since the day of manufacture manage to make their way into a location where they short out adjacent elements in the CRT electron guns. Symptoms may be intermittent or only show up when the TV or monitor is cold or warm or in-between. Some possible locations are listed below:

Except for the high voltage to other places, the short may actually be located in the CRT SOCKET or even on the CRT neck board, probably in the spark gap(s) for the problem pins. Remove the socket and test between the suspect pins on the CRT itself. If the CRT itself is fine, the spark gaps should be inspected and cleaned/repaired and/or components replaced. At this point, the cause may still be present - a short inside the flyback for example resulting in excessive voltage on one or more pins.

Assuming this is not the case, replacing the CRT may be the best solution but there are a variety of 'techniques' that can often be used to salvage a TV that would otherwise end up in the dump since replacing a CRT is rarely cost effective:

  1. Isolation - this will usually work for H-K shorts as long as only one gun is involved.

  2. Blowing out the short with a capacitor - depending on what is causing the short, this may be successful but will require some experimentation.

  3. Placing the CRT (TV or monitor) face down on a soft blanket and GENTLY tapping the neck to dislodge the contamination. Depending on the location of the short, one side or the other might be better as well. Sometimes, this can be done in-place while watching the picture.

A combination of (2) and (3) may be required for intermittent shorts which don't appear until under power. See the sections below for additional details. However, for shorts involving the focus and high voltage elements, even a sharp edge can result in arcing even if there is no actual short. There is no remedy for these types of faults.

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