I only have an hour or so of experience, But i have dennis's old boat.
It now has a JC pump and still a rideplate and the same shoe. Im running a 20" long ride plate with a Stock JC (needed to be longer to fit with the bowl)
I set it at right about 4.5* and it seemed to work well. Popped right up and on it, and only porpoised a little bit at about 3k rpm, but very little.
At 6k it was dead smooth, til the engine let go