Not best, but optimum Transmission?

Hey guys, I got the car back yesterday and it is good to go. I had the flexplate replaced with the solid version (no pacman) for internally balanced engines. The weight remains in place on the torque convertor. The moral of that story is: If you want it done right, just do the opposite of what a hack tells ya!

I have hesitated to mention the following because I don't know the truth of it. The previous owner told me that the engine was built by Herb McCandless. It wasn't built to be some super monster, but built strong and well. Most of you guys will know who Herb McCandless is so I won't go into that. But evidently when the engine was built, it was internally balanced. This is evidenced by having to switch to a flexplate built for an internally balanced engine, and everything coming back good.

This got me started thinking ... and now begs a question. The engine has never been perfectly smooth. Or even all that smooth. But I've just always shrugged it off to, that's how it's supposed to be. But since discovering that this engine is internally balanced, something occurred to me.

When I was given the car, the p.o. told me that the harmonic balancer weight had slipped. But he said that he had bought another harmonic balancer, gave it to me new in the box, and said, just install this before you drive it out on the road. Which I did. And went through the whole timing tape positioning etc. Here's my question:

Since this engine was built balanced, should it just be running a pulley on the front instead of a harmonic balancer? Maybe if I just put a pulley on the front, it would be even smoother...