Honestly i think you are right where you should be using stock ecu. Maybe the jwt ecu your friend is using might be helping him a little that's why he made more. Get a basic daughterboard and get a ve base map then you should be up to par.
i was running at 15 deg. for a while but 21 felt better, plus got slightly better mpgs. as far as raising the crossover... if you look at my first run (blue line, i did that one with cams off) hp tops off around 4800 and tq tops off around 4500. that would leave me with a loss of power from 4700 to 5k. if anything i may benefit from lowering the switch point 100-200 rpms.
they didnt measure the afr. i didnt notice that till after we had done our runs.
i wasnt advancing it during the dyno pulls, i had it set to that based on other peoples dyno results on the same set up. the a/f wasnt measured.
the more i think about it, the more im convinced had i not been running on oil with over 4k on it my numbers would have been in the low 180s. im happy with the power band though.