My oil burning pig. Pics too!

I had not looked back on the compression numbers..... but 196 is pretty high with an aggressive cam. And the exact same number on each cylinder is a first, for me at least. Any chance you could borrow another one and repeat?

Just a comment on 2nd rings; many rings have a 'twist' in them; that makes them slide up the bores in a different fashion than down the bores. The 2nd ring is often setup so that it will pass over oil on the way up, and then scrape the oil going down; that's intentionally part of the oil control. Upside down 2nd rings can be a contributor to poor oil control. All compression numbers were good in your case BUT, what is often missed is that poor oil control will tend to make compression numbers look better than they really are; the oil up on the top rings helps seal them up. So, good compression numbers occasionally don't give the exact state of things, especially if there are oil control problems.

You would likely see smoke out the exhaust at SOME point in operation if ring oil control was the case. And again, how it would get up on top of the valves is not at all clear. So that goes back (again and again) to the guides and seals. BTW, often drivers cannot spot small amounts of exhaust smoke easily; it is best IME to put someone in the back seat constantly looking back while the driver goes through various engine loads.

Suggestion: why not just pull the heads at this time and really go over the guides and seals? It needs to be done anyway if the whole engine is coming out, and you might just save yourself some work and cost if the problem is just in the heads.... which seems most likely. And you'll get a good look at the cylinder walls and can see glazing, scoring, check ring ridge, etc.

Seriously, this would be my path at this point because I would be suspecting guides/seals, but I would do another compression test with another gauge first to get that info as it sets before tearing anything apart. I would also do that before letting anyone start the expense of any full teardown.