Inaccurate Low Pressure Gauges

[Bigscience]

For Christmas my wife ordered me a 4 way secondary regulator system. When I opened it on Christmas morning, it was a 4 way manifold. Trying not to offend her (since I asked Santa for the regulator setup), I asked where she got it, how she ordered it and a few other questions until I figured out that they sent her the wrong part (still charged for the right one though). After much hassle, the correct one arrived today so I started to set it up. Finally I can run 4 beers at the correct pressure!

Upon closer inspection, I noticed that one of the gauges is reading ~7psi with nothing hooked up to it. I backed the regulator all the way down, played with the shutoff valves and nothing. I figured it may need some pressure on it to make things read correctly so I hooked it up to my tank and set that regulator at 10 psi, set each of the 4-way regulators almost to the max and closed the shut off valves. With that I got 18, 17, 25, and 20 psi on the gauges. Now, for a while I've felt that my secondary gauge may be reading low since I seem to over carbonate and have to practically turn it off to pour no foam. I was hoping to solve this by having the new setup.

So my questions are:
Has anyone else actually checked the accuracy of their gauges?
Can you even calibrate these type of gauges?
Should I return this thing do the inaccuracies/imprecision across the gauges?
Should I just try to figure out what the offsets are for each gauge (when compared to a know good, calibrated gauge) and go from there?

 

[brewingkitty]

a picture would be invaluable here to further diagnose the issue.

 

[Bigscience]

Here is what the 4-way secondary looks like:

I was planning on hooking it up inside the kegerator with the tank outside. I'd jack up the regulator on the tank to ~30 psi to feed the 4-way and then step the pressure down to what the beer style required.

 

[rawlus]

what brand gauges/regulator and what was approximate cost... i have not found the inexpensive options to be worth the bother. micromatic premium is what i prefer. sort of like perlick faucets. worth getting commercial quality.

without any other info, it sounds like it might be best to return the whole rig and trade up to something of more reliable quality.

 

[Bigscience]

what brand gauges/regulator and what was approximate cost... i have not found the inexpensive options to be worth the bother. micromatic premium is what i prefer. sort of like perlick faucets. worth getting commercial quality.

without any other info, it sounds like it might be best to return the whole rig and trade up to something of more reliable quality.

I got it from kegworks and was $165. The regulators are Chudnow and are made in NY.

I agree micromatic has really nice stuff, they want $234 for the same setup.

 

[rawlus]

some things are worth more. honestly. perlicks are much more expensive than regular taps, but the build quality, design/engineering and performance characteristics pay for themselves in satisfaction and reliability. cheaper inaccurate gauges or reliable more expensive ones. first off tho, i would get back in touch with kegworks and exchange the entire unit for another one and give it a second shot. then you can return the second set and get micromatics with a clear conscience.