Ah, ok. I thought it was possible to get shocked by the back of the CRT in general, if there's a charge -
Unfortunately, this is what started the You-Tube urban myths by latter day repairers of vintage TV's and VDU's who where completely clueless about the physics of CRT's and started scare mongering by showing big sparks when a CRT's charged anode got shorted out.
By the way, the energy stored in a charged CRT gives a shock a fraction of the energy of a Farmer's electric fence, mostly equivalent to the energy of a lawn mower's spark plug per discharge, doesn't kill anyone, just gives them a fright . So never carry a charged CRT, if you get a zap you might drop it on the floor.
As Andy pointed out, in many sets (color ones mainly) the screen and focus voltage resistor bleeder chain discharges the CRT's anode after turn off (takes some seconds).
For many monochrome CRT's with no bleeder resistance, they discharge on their own too, over a few days, because of the non zero reverse leakage of the Silicon EHT rectifier.
The internal Aquadag (internal conductive coating connected to the final anode) and final anode of the CRT is isolated from the other structures of the electron gun of the CRT, so the charge cannot escape via the base pins. And of course if any of those you-tubers who suggested it could, had half a brain, if it could actually do that, the charge would have already dissipated quickly via components on the neck board after turn off wouldn't it ?
As Andy suggests, simply do not go under the EHT cap. There is no need to go under there for nearly all VDU servicing unless you want to physically remove the CRT or the flyback transformer. The charge stored on the CRT's bulb is safely trapped in there (if there is any left after a time after turn off anyway).
Never do what it says on you tube, short the charge out with a wire and screwdriver, this can damage the internal connection of the CRT's anode button to the internal Aquadag. And worse, depending on where that earth clip is connected, it can induce high currents in pcb tracks and give IC's & transistors on the circuit board the equivalent of an EMP. Sony discovered this as early as 1960, when they released their very first transistorized TV sets and discovered how these high peak discharge currents wiped out delicate transistor junctions on the pcb, even ones that appeared remote from the discharge pathway. And they placed warnings in the service manuals. Subsequently the warnings disappeared and the you-tubers have no idea that they existed.
Only ever discharge a CRT (If Christ compels you) with an EHT probe that has a 100M Ohm or more resistor in it.
Calculate the initial peak current if you short out a capacitor (which is what the charged CRT is) charged to say 10kV with a resistance of a few ohms (the spark itself has a low negative resistance and a fixed voltage drop of only 500V in air, so it doesn't count to adding any significant resistance), compared to say shorting it into 100 Meg Ohms.
Stop believing you tube videos on anything related to VDU's & CRT's. Instead I would suggest some classical textbooks on the topic.
