I bought this mostly for my potted blueberries. When I first bought it, the needle would spike to the right as expected. Now, even after cleaning the tip with the conditioning paper, it does not spike to the right first. It goes straight to the presumed ph level and then slowly stabilizes. The readings are consistently between 4-5, but I do not get that initial spike to the right. Does anyone else have this issue and how important is that initial spike to the right. Do I have a bad meter?

I did read on a few blogs and maybe even here that you can use 0000 steel wool to clean in place of the conditioning paper and I did do that some last year. Did I possibly ruin it doing so?