Thanks for the suggestions fellas. I finally had the time to drop the valve body and poke around. Sure enough a spring in the 2nd accumulator broke and that was causing the harsh shift. Finally put the shift kit in that had been collecting dust for almost a year only taking 8 hours of wtf'n around under there.

The final result is exactly what I was hoping for. I put in the HD2 kit with NO washers, vette servo, sonnax 4th gear servo, servo release check valve, and aluminum accumulator pistons. I used the transgo sep plate and didn't touch the 1-2 feed hole, drilled the 2-3 to .130 and all others to .093.

Shifts are crisp in all gears and the 1-2 is not overly harsh. In fact it banged harder with my broken spring setup

Hope this helps anyone who encounters a similar problem or looking for a good shift kit setup.

Happy Holidays