Need Help, no spark

[RestoCreations]

Ok, i am at a loss on this one.

My car was running fine, or pretty well with a mallory distributor that i had installed while my MSD 8594 pro billet distributor was off for repair. The mechanical advance had been hanging up and that is why i sent it back to MSD.
My MSD distributor came back from repair and i removed the mallory and installed the repaired msd unit. The car would not start. So, i checked to make sure spark was coming out of the coil wire by shorting the violet and green wires as per the MSD instructions. I assumed that meant the magnetic pick up was bad, so i replaced it today. Well, no fire still.

-Grounds are good
-I have tried a new magnetic pick ups with no luck
-I have tried the mallory distributor with no luck
-I have tested the box for spark and it is producing spark.

Any thoughts? I think something has gone wrong inside the box and it is not sending out the right signal. In the past, i had a lot of trouble with the engine having way too much advance at start up, enough to make it ping. I thought this was just due to the advance function hanging up, but it also did it with the mallory distributor. I turned on the retard function by switching the selector to 6, which should retard the timing 20 degrees at start up, but it did not work.
Thanks