Carburetor choice
Well if it starts easy and runs well ……
Your guy could have just gave it a race like advance and said set max timing at 34-36 & your GTG! How fast the advance comes in is a mystery though.
In my younger days…. (OH Boy!)
We would disconnect the vacuum advance, loose a advance, put a timing light on it and rev it until the advance stopped. It was a very quick advance and we just twisted the distributor up a lot.
It worked for us then.