School me again... first time tuning a BB

I've got that cam in a 9.5 440, timing is set at 16 at idle, 750 rpm, and 39 degrees total. This is with 452 heads that have been pocket ported with 2.14/1.81 valves. The combination made 520 hp 545 tq on pump gas with a old M1 single plane and Holley 850.
It sounds like you don't have enough curve in the distributor, I would like to see a 22° sweep with a total of 38 or 39° all in by 2500 rpm at the latest.

I am going to ask at what rpm the converter flash at and what does it stall at?

I whould replace carb with a Holley style race carb with 4 corner adjustment to help with the idle.
I would replace the carb before you replace the torqconverter.
Because I suspect you are giving away lower end power with the carb and timing. Once you get it optimized then you can decide if you need to change the converter. I just looked and my 440 made 500 foot pounds of torque at 3500 rpm so it's got some lower end grunt. I'll go back to the dyno and see if we made pulls from 2500.