Ok here's the deal. Dynodon said that in the variable spacing plate cell, the chokes are connected with start wires to the cell, and end wires to the pulsing circuit and ground. I've tired this with all my chokes, and I'm not getting the high voltage stuff.
(The following is with the secondary/choke node grounded to the power supply ground) I tried one of the wires backwards, and then I got the high voltage results. Then I tried my other chokes, the VSPC chokes, and the speaker wire chokes, and my 24 gage chokes, and they all work with the high voltage, they all light the light in parallel with tap water, they all make a LOT of noise, 24 gage chokes are the loudest, and they all show hundreds to over a thousand volts across the cell.
I now assume that Warps toroid chokes have one wire wound clockwise and one wire wound counter-clockwise, which is why if you hook it up "backwards" it still works the same (actually you can't even tell which way is which, but I think it works both ways...).
When both wires are wound the same direction side by side, you have to connect one start wire to the cell and the other end wire to the cell to get these kind of results.