Monitor tubes

[IG-88]

How often do these go bad? I have a WG 25" in a neo-geo cab without the chassis, and thought of buying one from 8-liners. But then I got to thinking, why would someone just take out the chassis in the first place, maybe it wouldn't be worth spending the money on a new chassis if the tube is bad. Is there a way to check the tube without a chassis? It doesn't appear to have anythng visually wrong with it. I can't decide. Help!

[tom61]

To testing a picture tube requires special hardware, a TV repair shop might have the hardware to do it.

Reasons I can think of to remove the chassis, but not the CRT:

The chassis went bad, previous owner threw out the old, and never got a new one.

The tube's vacuum was breached... Look for cracking, especially around the neck.

Excesive burn-in, but you would probably see that.

[Tailgunner]

Did whoever you acquired the cabinet from have any others with 25" WG monitors? They might have pulled the board from a known working monitor to test or fix another monitor, or they might have pulled it to simply to have a spare chassis.

[IG-88]

Nope. Apparently this had been sitting in the back of his shop for AGES. For all he knows he got it that way.  
I did take a closer look at the tube again, no probs I can see. Maybe I'll order one and if it don't work I can trade it for something here.  

[Ken Layton]

If it came from a game operator chancesw are they pulled the chassis board to fix a game on location and either never got around to fixing the broken chassis or it just plain got lost/forgotten about. If there's nothing obviously wrong with the tube from the outside then it's worth getting a replacement chassis and trying it out. Besides it's a lot cheaper to ship a chassis than it is to ship an entire monitor and it's inherent risk of breakage of the picture tube in transit!

[IG-88]

Wow, thanks for the reply. I forgot all about this thread! Although I haven't purchased the chassis yet I do intend on buying one. This will probably be a "next-spring" project tho, I'll have more time then!  

[Ken Layton]

It's always a good idea to take your time when working on monitors as it prevents costly mistakes plus you get the satisfaction of "I fixed it myself".