Monitor Rejuvenation - Fact or Fiction?

oktobernv

Member

Donor 2011
Joined
Mar 17, 2011
Messages
483
Reaction score
1
Location
Henderson, Nevada
Spoke to a local "arcade tech" today about Monitor Rejuvenation.

He said "don't do it" "your monitor will die in 1 to 2 years"

"you are killing the monitor by attempting to rejuv it"

hmmmm....

True??

Is a "rejuv" a temporary band-air or a real "fix"

Thought and insight greatly appreciated.

Thx

Rob
 
Depends on how lucky you get.


I don't go around rejuving every tube i see.. There needs to be a problem that cant be adjusted out etc before i ever break out the rejuveenator. I make it a habit to only rejuvanate when all else fails and the tube is unusable if i cant rejuve it.

Now when i have a bad tube.. say red is out.. tubes fucked, unusable, no red..

If i can zap it, get it working again and get a couple more years worth of use out of it, WHY WOULDN'T i try?

Where people get into trouble is zapping every gun on every tube, going for that "perfect" picture.. Going about it that way you might get some nice looking monitors but they will have reduced life and you will murder several tubes along the way.


A rejuvenator is worth owning, even if only using as a piece of test equipment...

Say you have no green.. is it a chassis issue? gameboard issue? or a bad tube?

With a rejuve, you can test the tube(with 100% no harm done) and get an answer as to wether you have a tube issue or something else further down the line. Simply testing will allow you to check the heater and gun outputs of every color WITHOUT ruining the guns in the tube(if setup correctly)
 
Last edited:
I've been rejuvenating tubes for 8+ years and haven't had one fail because of the tube since...
 
I've been rejuvenating tubes for 8+ years and haven't had one fail because of the tube since...

if a tube is in a state that makes you want to, or makes you think it may need a rejuve, it's a pile of crap at that point anyway.

I have rejuved a at least 20 monitors, none of them have crapped out yet, and as a matter of fact they look killer afterwards.
 
if a tube is in a state that makes you want to, or makes you think it may need a rejuve, it's a pile of crap at that point anyway.

I have rejuved a at least 20 monitors, none of them have crapped out yet, and as a matter of fact they look killer afterwards.

Yep. you don't rejuv tubes that already look good...
 
I was told similar by a former CRT TV repair person. I figured, even if it "kills" the tube, if it needs a rejuve its kind of already dead otherwise, so why not? If it kills the tube, so what? It was trash anyway. At least thats how I looked at it.
 
My uncle who was in TV repairs for years told me the same ages ago. But you have to remember that they we doing TVs, those things that tend to run about 4 hours a day average.

Not sure about you guys, but my cabs make very little hours. only when I want to play they are on.

If you assume 4 hrs a day at 365 days for one year, you still get 1460 hours of play out of it.....thats a lot really.


Cadillcman explained it perfectly, nothing to add to that...
 
The rejuvinator works by stripping the outer layers of coating off the cathode, thus exposing fresh material, which is capable of emitting more electrons. There is a limited number of times you can do this - eventually there is nothing left at all.

But... if the gun isn't emitting enough, and the tube is not producing a good picture, then you have two options - replace the tube, or try zapping it.

Note that there are also two settings on these things (at least the better ones, really ancient rejuvinators are pretty barbaric) - you have "clean and balance", and "rejuvinate". MOST times, all you need to do is the "clean and balance" setting, which is much less harsh on the gun.

Rejuvinators do not always work. I've had some tubes (usually Zenith branded ones in 25" K7000's that are just plain too far gone. Or, they clean up for about a month, and get dim again. On the other side of things, I've fixed a bunch of dim tubes that stayed nice and bright.

And you CAN kill a tube with a rejuvinator. Easily, actually, if you don't know how to use it. Done correctly, there is very little risk - and if you have a dim, unusable tube anyway, what do you have to lose?

-Ian
 
K7000-25 inch tubes seem to be the worst for me and they are usually the Zenith variety. It is also usually the red gun. Yes, I have killed about 5-6 of these over the last 10 years. I still rejuve tubes. Yes, you should clean and rebalance them first to see if that is good enough, if not, then you have to resort to rejuvenation. Everything above seems to be right on in my opinion in regards to whether to rejuve or not.
 
I think what the tech was trying to tell you is that you don't need to take a heavy handed approach to this.

Use the 'clean and balance' or 'restore' function on the rejuventor first. Think of the 'rejuvenate' option as the last ditch effort.

On my B&K 490, 'restore' usually does a good job cleaning the guns. Sometimes I have to do it 2 or 3 times to get a reading to stay in the 'good' range after doing it, but I can usually get the tube to play nice with that setting.

The one and only time I had to use the 'rejuvenate' setting on it was for a fellow KLOVer (Deadpool66) on his 25" K7xxx monitor. On that one I had to zap TWO guns with the rejuvenate function. The ending result was a beautiful picture. To my knowledge, he's still using that monitor and it still looks great.

I wouldn't really worry about shortening the life of the tube with rejuvenating it. I doubt you'll be using the tube for enough hours to be concerned with how much life the tube has. Besides, as mentioned above, if the tube's bad enough to warrant rejuvenating it, then you're past the point of return anyway. Might as well try it.
 
Thanks for all the great replys and information.

Quite an education.

I'm gaining confidence in trying my 1st "rejuv"

Rob
 
The rejuvinator works by stripping the outer layers of coating off the cathode, thus exposing fresh material, which is capable of emitting more electrons.

-Ian

Not entirely correct. In a lot of cases the reason for the low emission of a gun can be flakes of cathode material that swell or cause a short between electrodes in the gun. In these cases if you can 'blast' the shorts away the tube becomes useable rather than landfill.

I have found these types of shorts be be the most 'correctable' - in almost all cases where there is no cathode (or low cathode) material left no amount of re-juvenating can replace the lost material.
 
Not entirely correct. In a lot of cases the reason for the low emission of a gun can be flakes of cathode material that swell or cause a short between electrodes in the gun. In these cases if you can 'blast' the shorts away the tube becomes useable rather than landfill.

I have found these types of shorts be be the most 'correctable' - in almost all cases where there is no cathode (or low cathode) material left no amount of re-juvenating can replace the lost material.

No, I was describing how the rejuvinate function worked. The "remove shorts" is another mode of operation, and it's done for entirely different reasons. You don't get low emissions from shorts, you get other things - like a stuck on gun (heater-cathode short) or a dead gun (G2 - G1 short), or other failures.You can check for leakage with the tester, and blast out the shorts - but it's different than rejuvination.

-Ian
 
My Muter rejuvenator actually has three levels of rejuvenating and I only had to use the first one (lowest) to get my k5515 tube back into good values for all guns.

Recently I checked a tube of a friend who thought it might be leak and it turned out to be in excellent condition on all three guns and everything else so his problems were on the chassis.

Whatever you do, follow the manual closely and you. wont kill tubes unneccesary.
 
K7000-25 inch tubes seem to be the worst for me and they are usually the Zenith variety. It is also usually the red gun. Yes, I have killed about 5-6 of these over the last 10 years. I still rejuve tubes. Yes, you should clean and rebalance them first to see if that is good enough, if not, then you have to resort to rejuvenation. Everything above seems to be right on in my opinion in regards to whether to rejuve or not.

Was the tube in the 720 I traded for several years back rejuvenated? :p
 
Back
Top Bottom