Thanks to a member here, I procured a replacement VFD glass. It works now!
The problem seems to be the capacitor mod to fix the glitchy dimming. I put on a 0.01 uF cap (maybe the wrong value?) and it obliterated the CS signal to the pot. This in turn cranked up the voltage to 117V which fried the VFD.
![frown frown](/images/graemlins/default_dark/frown.gif)
So instead of the cap I decided to fix the source of the problem and I put a 820 ohm resistor on the one-shot circuit. This is a resistor under the VFD; it used to be a 620 ohm if I recall. No more dimmer problems and the voltage is good now. This empeg will live on!