So very stuck...

Okay, so yesterday I spent all day retarding the distributor. My timing mark on the balancer says it is sitting at 5*, I am assuming that with the mechanical advance that means it's about 19*. Is this correct? If so this is where the top end pinging stopped. I changed out the springs in the distributor... my brother who had( and I mean HAD) been helping me with this build apparently put both the silver springs in and I was going all in at about 2300 rpm. It is now back to factory. Both blue springs, going in at about 3000 -3200 rpms. Hes also the one who put the tape on the balancer... which means at this point I'm not even sure that's correct and I will need to get out my piston stop and verify that the balancer is correctly timed as well as not slipping. It is a new balancer, installed when the motor was built. Motor has about 15k-20k miles on it at most. I checked the piston tops with my micro camera through the spark plug holes and no holes thankfully. But I'm pretty sure if I had a hole static timing would not of held at 180 psi. I'm not sure if the videos I upload are providing good enough sound but I'm getting alot of popping above 2k. I'm assuming this means I'm running rich. I can dial that back, as I changed the rods and springs when I noticed that the spark plug was dry and dark brown. I thought I was lean, now im too rich. But the spark plug looks alot better. Had to deal with the shot pump piston as the rubber on it was too large and had bound itself making the truck stutter at take off. Chinese crap. Bought an edelbrock made plunger and installed it. Now theres no more stutter. I will check the balancer and make sure it hasnt slipped when I find my piston stop... buried in my tool box somewhere. So as a summary if I'm correct, I'm at 19* @ idle and 29-30* all in. But pinging is gone on the top end. Now I did hook up the vacuum assist on the distributor and I immediately went from 5* on the balancer to 20* on the balancer...again my brother was playing with this so he may have turned it up, or is this normal? Timing is not my strongest skill and I have alot to learn apparently. But I want to say thank you all for helping and the advice. You guys are two thumbs up in my book.