I'd been listening to my relief valve at the end of the cylinder travel for some time and suspected it wasn't set correctly as the FEL had a difficult time lifting the front on anything but a hard surface. Finally tweaked the relief valve when I got stuck last week in the muck and violla, front came right up. Trouble is, I adjusted too far and can hear the engine bog cause it's not relieving early enough.
Bought a 3000psi gage and brought it to work to check its accuracy. At first, it showed 25-50psi high. The more I "exercised" it up and down, the better it got. I finally reached a point where it was 10-15 lbs off.
Most of this type of instrumentation has a bourdon tube to turn the dial and are calibrated to be accurate at 50-75% of their full scale. I recommend running a brand new gage up and down 5-10 times before you take a reading. This is probably true if its been sitting for some time, too.
John Bud is right on about checking the relief valves. We check them annually on pneumatic systems. Not only do the springs weaken over time, the seats wear due to the chatter every time we make them work. It does this because at overpressure, the seat lifts just long enough to relieve the pressure and slams back down from the spring pressure, unless the pressure remains high enough to hold the valve open constantly. Still, repeated use over time causes the same problem as chatter.