Response from Jonathan: Doug,

Yes, it is entirely possible that your tube could be bad. A bad tube is somewhat rare but not necessarily uncommon. The blue arcing you are getting in the tube is usually a good indicator that the tube is indeed bad. This arcing occurs when air gets into the tube which causes it to malfunction. Unfortunately there are no good options at this point. You can either buy another arcade monitor (which I know is expensive) or you can start searching for a replacement tube (which can be difficult to find). Junknet.net has some information on how to swap a tube if you want to go that route but it can be time consuming to find one that matches your monitor chassis. If you’re not 100% sure that your monitor chassis is working, it’s probably better to buy a new monitor rather than spend a lot of time finding a tube for a chassis that may or may not work.

I really wish I had better news for you but unfortunately this is the way it goes sometimes. If you want a cheaper route, you might try using an off-the-shelf computer monitor as a replacement. Since a lot of Golden Tee boards have a VGA output on them, it should be easy to substitute a computer monitor in your cabinet. I’ve seen this done with many cabinets recently and while it’s not the route I would take, it is much cheaper and will get your game up and running relatively quickly.

Hope that helps. Thank you for your question and good luck with your repair.