Another MSD problem

Well I called MSD's tech line today & explained my problem & the tech is leaning towards the pick up in the distrubutor as being the problem. Also he said to get rid of the ballast because it robs the MSD of juice. When I got home from work I pulled the distrubutor & the reluctor has nicks in it & the pick up had some black goo under it. I found that the thick blue wire coming from the ign switch under the dash has 12v in the run & start postion only so I'll tap into that for the red switched wire on the MSD unit. I might look into a MSD distrubutor to replace the one I have now. Jegs has them for around $215 with shipping.I've had the factory conversion kit in my car for over 10 years with plenty of 6500rpm+ blasts so upgrading to the MSD might not be a bad idea.