Help! Small block 360 has a knocking sound

CheeseRules01! said
When I said most were at 200 PSI, that was just me being lazy. All of them are actually different readings, but all are close to about 200. The lowest reading I had was like 190, and the highest was about 205 PSI.

OK, that is all OK and very consistent. BTW, having a new gauge does not mean it is a good gauge. That is why I suggest trying another gauge as a check. For you to truly have those high compression readings, you would need MUCH higher compression ratio, OR the intake valves lifting very differently than they are supposed to (like all the intake pushrods bent or all of the intake lifters collapsed or all of the intake lobes wrecked), or the cam timing advanced a couple of teeth. None of that matches well with the symptoms.

I am keying in mostly on the exhaust note, which really sounds like a couple of cylinders missing when you rev the engine a bit at the end.

One other easy thing to try: If you have a voltmeter, place it on 'ohms' and measure the resistance of each spark plug wire end to end; for standard resistance wires, they all should be between 3,000 and 10,000 ohms. Sometimes they can get hot and fail and since you had one burn out, the rest are suspect.

Did you observe anything when you looked at the plugs?