[markem]

I assume that the crunching noise is when you are smoking the cigar or rolling it in your hand. Ordinarily, I would say that the cigar is dry, but unless I held the cigar I could not say for certain. If the cigar was in your tupperdor (I am assuming since you said 70%) for a short time, then I would say that the cigar was dry and has not had enough time to absorb the right level of humidity.

For the beads, it is possible (maybe even likely) that the humidor is too dry. The PG solution is likely keeping the air 'wet' but the beads are passive, so likely the true reading of your humidor is coming through.

Place a shot glass of distilled water in the humidor and see how things go for a week or more. If you have room to use a wider vessel, use that. Using a sponge is also good, but you have to be careful that it doesn't have any mold, cleaners, etc. in it.

You can also do a salt test like you do for calibration. Put the salt and water solution in a tupperware container with a hygrometer. Wait 24 hours for all to stabilize. Now add the beads and see what happens. You should see the humidity trying to move to the set point of the beads. Check every hour or two for at least 6-10 hours and run the test for at least 24 hours. If the humidity is diving way low, then you may have gotten beads with the wrong set point and thus should contact the vendor to see about instructions for resetting the point.