Hmm.. Not an effective magnifier

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: Koen van den Berg <cerberus_rex-at-planet.nl> 

Goodday all,
I was wondering if you could help me out with my latest project. I'm in the 
process of building a magnifier setup, and I hit a snag. My coil isn't 
giving me the output I figure it should. If it's more than 5 inches I'd be 
surprised, and I doesn't even break out from the toroid by its own accord. 
It used to, but since I resently 'upgraded it' with a rotary gap and a 
better MMC, it doesn't do much. My specs are the following:

Coils

Secondary : wound over 23" on a 4.5" coilform with 26 AWG wire (approx. 
1500 turns)
Primary : 12 turns of 12 AWG wire spaced over 10 cm on a 12.4" diameter 
solenoid.
Driver 1: wound over 9.8" on a 4.5" coilform with 26 AWG wire (approx 300 
turns)
Driver 2: wound over 9.8" on a 4.5" coilform with 14 or 16 AWG

Primary Circuit

Transformers : 2 x 10 kV 50 mA NST's (with internal overload protection 
switch) for 10 kV 100 mA
MMC : 32 nF -at- 22 KVDC (built with the .15 uF 2 KVDC geek caps)
Spark Gap: Synchronous Rotary 150 BPS
Line Filters: scrounged top of the line filter

My Driver system specs are a bit off, I realise. I always use driver # 1. 
But I recently made the transition from a 16 nF ceramic MMC (which was 
actually only suited for one of my 10 kV 50 mA xfrmrs, by my calculations) 
to my geek group MMC, as specified above. Previously, with only one 50 mA 
transformer in the loop and my 16 nF MMC, the thing worked, but not very 
well. We had to put in a couple of resistors in the primary circuit to stop 
our NST's internal breaker from clicking off. Good thing it's there, or our 
coil would have been dead long since. Then we added another 10 kV 50 mA 
transformer, removed the resistors, and it worked. I figure the primary is 
too heavy for 1 xfrmr. But now we have a bigger MMC, and a new synchronous 
rotary, and it behaves like this. Small sparks, as opposed to the medium 
ones we used to obtain (20"). With this setup as is, we had to interchange 
driver 1 with driver 2 to even get sparks! I don't understand. We've had a 
3 foot long spark in the past, and now this? With better caps and a better 
gap? Do I need to cut back on my primary turns if I want to use my driver 
number 1, or is my design fundamentally flawed? Any tips would be appreciated.

Koen