914 Ignition woes

My 914 only has about 45 hours, and the last time I flew it, on runup, when I turned off Lane A, it lost a good 500 RPM and ran very rough. So I started troubleshooting, following Lockwood's guidance. I have some clues..

1. Cylinder 1 EGT runs about 100 deg hotter than the rest. 

2. The plugs are pretty sooty on cylinder 1.

Here's what I tried so far:

- I swapped the two 'vertical' 6 pin connectors, and the roughness moved from the A switch to the B switch. When I put the vertical connectors back to the original spot and swapped the horizontal one, the roughness also moved to the B switch. 

- I swapped all of the plugs from top to bottom.

- I swapped all of the spark plug caps from top to bottom (trimming the ends of the wire in the process)

I'm thinking that it has to be the ignition wire for 1B, or the coil that drives it.

So, I think my next step is to swap coils between the top and bottom. I would like to just snip the ignition wires and reconnect, but I cannot get a good enough grip on the wire for 1B on the coil side. I'm dreading taking everything apart to swap coils around, and it seems like I should be replacing all the wires while I'm at it.

Is there anything I'm missing that could be causing the problem? Cyl 2B isn't running hot EGT like 1B, so it seems like if it was the coil, both spark plugs driven by that coil would be running hot. That leads me to think it's the wire for 1B, but like I said, I can't seem to get that one free.

Finally, any tips to removing the coils or the wires to the coil without removing the whole thing? It looks like an awful project involving removing the carb, intake, etc.