Corsa Exhaust overpipe/front pipe combo
 

Hey y’all, I was wondering what would be the best setup in terms of front pipe and overpipe with the corsa exhaust. Also what would be a good UEL with the exhaust. I want to keep the drone as minimal as possible.

I've been researching this a lot and I decided I'm going to go with a catted JDL UEL header and their ultra quiet catted and resonated over pipe/front pipe combo. It's loud as it is, and I went for a ride in a fully catless car (UEL header) and it was very loud. But not like ear bleeding loud. So I'm thinking the combo above should be livable

If you want "drone as minimal as possible" then get a catted UEL header of your choice and keep the stock over and front pipe unless you really want a full aftermarket exhaust. Know that most of your power gains are going to come from the header, not the over and front pipes

Not much gains from catted header though.

I have next to no drone with my Corsa, uncatted UEL and stock FP.

Stock FP goes a very long way to eliminate drone.

I had the JDL catted UEL header. Didn't add much power. As mentioned by @churchx - a catted header provides minimal gains.

I had my header paired with a stock FP/OP and a Perrin 2.5" resonated catback. Sounded quite nice. Added some UEL rumble, and less additional volume than expected. Also seemed to cut some of the bass frequencies of the catback.

I ended up blowing up the cat and JDL replaced the header under warranty. I chose to sell it rather than reinstall, because I was trading in my '13. Note that they no longer warranty the cat.

TL;DR - Catless header or don't bother, unless you just want that UEL sound.

I currently have the following and it is a bit too loud especially at startup.
JDL uncatted UEL header
JDL 3" catted OP/DP with resonator
Perrin 2.5" resonated

I think the 3" OP/DP is causing a volume increase.
Would adding back the stock OP/DP quiet it down a bit?

Definitely worth trying!

I thought about having a catless header with the stock front pipe, but - and just a disclaimer, this may be a rookie ass question - does this not create a constriction in the exhaust system, a bottleneck of sorts? Cause the header has larger diameter pipes, same with the catback, but the front pipe is still 1.75", if I'm not mistaken. Just to confirm, this is not a problem, and doesn't cause weird exhaust pressure issues?

Nope, not really.

IIRC there is some restriction but not large enough to care. Hence the advises like to consider catback mostly only by sound one wants to get, not for performance sake. Yes, you may get a little bit with 2.5" or even more so 3" exhaust, but so will grow loudness (even more so if in combination with catless header), performance? Not so much.
Keeping one of stock cats is normally almost sure way to pass emissions tests. And if it's choice between 1st or 2nd cat deletion, 1st, in header, hurts performance much much more.
So you should be ok with going for catless header + stock catted frontpipe, you won't loose much. Remember to get tune for new header though, to get it's gains fully (and to disable cat readiness check for CEL to not appear).

You don't seem like the kind of guy that bothers with sound clips, but.... you wouldn't happen to have one, would you? And which header btw?