CRT Tube Replacement and Rebuilding

There are many brands of CRT video projectors out there, however there are far fewer CRT tube manufacturers. The main four tube manufacturers are: Sony, NEC, MEC (Panasonic), and Zenith.

Zenith and NEC only make tubes for their own projectors, and did not subcontract their tubes out to other brands. Sony and MEC make tubes for many other manufacturers.

Sony tubes can be found in:

- Barco
- Electrohome ECP series
- Sony
- Seleco
- Ampro 2000, 2300, 2600 4000

MEC tubes can be found in:

- Barco
- Electrohome Marquee series
- Panasonic
- Ampro (all but 2000, 2300, 2600, 4000)

Some CRT tubes can be rebuilt. Rebuilding consists of stripping the old glass envelope of the electron gun, removing the worn phosphor from the inside tubes surface of the tube, recoating a new phosphor coating inside the tube and then installing a new electron gun on the neck of the tube. This is a very exacting process, in fact I understand that the rephosphoring machine is worth about $2 million dollars, so I know of only one company that rebuilds picture tubes in the US: Video Display Corporate (see the Links page for more information).

This company can rebuild Zenith, NEC, MEC and some Sony tubes. Rebuilt tubes are very close in quality to new tubes, especially if new glass is used, although I test run all rebuilt tubes for 100 hours to catch any possible defects that might occur during the rebuild process.

Expect to pay somewhere between $500.00 to $800.00 USD per tube for a rebuild, and $750.00 to $3500.00 for a new tube, depending on the size and source of the tubes. New Zenith tubes for video grade projectors are somewhat below the $250.00 USD mark per tube.

Although some manufacturers have now discontinued new tubes, the rebuilding process is actually expanding rather than shrinking as of 2005, so rebuilt tubes and new tubes will be available for years to come. For the do-it-yourselfer, good used tubes for most sets can be found on eBay, and occasionally from resellers like myself.

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