...I had a broadcast BVM-1910 that got the aperture grille wires
criss-crossed from a hand-held degaussing coil. On a tour at the
San Diego Sony plant in '86 I saw a guy whose job it was to hit
each new CRT (hanging conveyor) in the face with a rubber mallet.
3 or 4 smacks later, the monitor was fine again. Sometime percussive
maintenance works.

The thought of "whacking" the faceplate never crossed my mind. The small
vibrations of moving the set and laying it down on another stand must have
been enough to "detangle" the wires.