Thank you both for your help!

I put this board to a lot of stress with soldering and desoldering, but it has been a good learning experience. I will assemble a new board and should get better results, as well as provide me some more performance information to help me understand and compare the two units.

On a side note, another thing I noticed is that putting a single finger on the geiger tube would trigger danger CPM readings– is that normal behavior? I found that I did not have to ‘short’ the tube to another part of the board for this to happen. I can see how for hand-held use it would be critical to have some sort of enclosure

Thanks again