440 power gains/ aluminum head advantages?

^^^^ Interesting from you 2 engine builders above. I haven't installed nearly as many cams as you (I've probably done less than a dozen) but I've always considered "straight up" to be what the cam manufacturers' specify the ICL to be on the cam card. Any advance or retard comes from that defined position. I always assumed someone at the manufacturer deciding the cam lobes had a reason fir specifying the ICL where they did. Hence why as stated above it is important to factually describe where it gets installed in absolute terms.

Fast forward to my time spent on engine development with one of the Big 3 (40+ years). All of our cam positions were defined based on computer simulations and then dyno confirmation testing. We put a lot of time into that and designing the rest of the system and manufacturing capabilities to hit that number. But I don't know how every cam grinder out there specs theirs and whether it was known to be ideal.

And as we all know, nothing beats actual experience when we're dealing with these old engines and every custom build. I'm certainly not going to tell John (PBR) (or others!) where to index his cams for best performance!! His numbers speak for themselves.