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Ralph Mowery

In article ,
says...

I opened it up and the crimps and resistors are good. Do you have any idea
what the lamp's breakdown voltage specification indicates? According to the
datasheet, the NE-2 has a breakdown voltage of 65VAC. The high brightness
bulbs have a higher breakdown voltage of 95VAC.

The voltage will not make much difference.

Many of the common neon bulbs will take about 90 volts to light. When
they do light they act almost like a voltage regulator and will have
about 70 volts across them no matter what the current is (within limits
of blowing up) The higher brightness bulbs will often have more voltage
across them. The resistor is to limit the current though them to a safe
level. On an AC circuit you will have over 150 volts peak so most any
common bulb will fire off.

If you have a way of slowly raising the voltage on the bulbs, you can
check at what voltage they first light at. Then cut the voltage off and
drop it to about 10 volts below that voltage. Then just touch the bulb
and it will fire off. The extra heat eill be enough to make it light
up.