""54 degrees is about what you'd get with mechanical (25) and vacuum (18) advance kicked in on top of initial.""


I would agree but my current distributor is a non vacuum advance unit that was previously setup at 24 degrees initial and 34 total. I ran it this way for several years and then as soon as I hook up this new control box, I now have 54 degrees at the same idle rpms.
I don't mind just resetting the initial timing but I would like to know first if the cause is from the MSD box or from something else.

I have a vacuum advance distributor coming but I would like to get this one setup correctly before I add in another new part.
Thank you,