What is the best way to test or confirm a tube power supply is going south. The device will on occasion fail to start with the switch. A hard start performed with the battery door fires it up when it does happen. I have not gotten it to do it when I've had the switch contacts exposed to check voltage.

If it is suspected that it is the psu is there any ideas on how long it could operate before total failure? The device functions perfectly otherwise when in operation.

There is I noticed, a gain pot on the circuit board itself. Wondering if that can be related in any way if it had a dead spot in it?

Thanks for the help

So, something like this happened to me the other day. One of my Pitbulls didn't power up, and it flickered after a few failed restarts... so I thought the unit died. First thought is, tube died; so I  took the non-working tube out and placed it inside my other Pitbull housing and bam, fired right up... so I proceeded to inspect the housing and when switching it on/off I see the IR led indicator fainting real quick... I am upset at this point in time b/c I am thinking that my brand new housing just died... so right before I am about to resort to the angry user email, I decide to check one last thing: the battery. Took battery out and reads 3.06 volts under zero load, so at first I am like... hmm, did the housing took a dump? So, I swapped batteries between the two Pitbull housings and the suspected dead housing fired right up.  So I place the now "suspected dead" battery on the good working housing and it doesn't power up as well. So, I am now pretty sure the culprit is the battery and not the housings/tubes. So, I reach for my RC grade battery tester and I put some load to the battery and sure enough, battery volts drops to 0.1V when applying any load. The crazy thing is that this Duracell CR123 battery was almost brand new, not even a week of intermittent use.

So, before you go on a witch hunt, check the battery. Both my Pitbulls use now Energizer CR123 batteries and I haven't had a problem since.

G.