ok, just got home from running the car at the car control clinic at PR. It DEFINITELY has more power, and the torque curve feels quite a bit better. The car now feels faster than my 330i
(side note... the car handled AMAZING on the various exercises throughout the day. Every single instructor took a ride in it and asked about it, along with some Toyota employees that were excited to see the mods on it. The car transitions from understeer to oversteer very predictably and it's SO EASY to manage oversteer on this car it's crazy. With the HP+ pads, I was out braking and out maneuvering EVERYONE on the cone courses, even the e90 M3s, and the amateur-ish 911 GT3 car. All eyes were on the BRZ on the skid pad, as it was the easiest to slide/drift predictably, so far all of us amateurs, it was the only car that could really whip it around the cone repeatedly.)
The car sounds amazing. It IS louder, and John/Jason are going to put another resonator on the downpipe to fix the 3500-4000rpm drone that seems to be occurring with the car. The car had a very specific moment when it smoothed out a lot and the exhaust note changed, about 2 hours into the driving event. There was some rasp happening at around that 4000rpm mark, but it seems the ECU has adjusted to the system. It pulls hard, feels good, no check engine lights, and Jason pulled data logging the entire 3 hour drive up here before the event- safe to say, this system feels safe. I ran the car up to redline, and even hit the rev limiter once, all day long. No knocking, weird sounds, power loss, anything. Consider this fully tested, imo.
I've got drive videos from early in the day doing some braking exercises, and some later in the day on the handling oval (and me having a ton of fun oversteering around the corner exit for fun a bunch, haha) that show the difference between before/after the car seemed to adjust, so you can hear that sound difference I am talking about. (and I felt the difference in the pedal/feel of the car too)
Videos will be uploaded and posted tonight, I was running this setup:
"Larger" of the 2 nameless headers, heat wrapped
Nameless overpipe/downpipe combo pipe with cat
Stock midpipe
Nameless axleback
It sounds so wicked.