I've read a bit more about the WDT and tried to focus on the top 60% of the coffee and not go all the way to the bottom. I've also increased my dose to 10g, but I think I'm going to play around with it a bit more to see if anything there helps. Any suggestions for dosing size with WDT on the 49mm basket?

Although I think I still need practice getting WDT right. I've gotten a couple shots with channels in them, I guess creating a hole with the needle rather than eliminating them. Is a downward tap on the counter necessary to get rid of those?

I am now dosing from the doser onto the doser lid. Performing a quick WDT to break up big clumps, then dosing into basket with the gram scale (10.5g now ) taking care to distribute evenly. I then perform another WDT without going all the way to the bottom and trying to keep everything as even as possible. Couple slight taps on the counter, nutating motion of flat bottomed tamper and finish with a light tamp.

I'm still getting occasional pinholes, but now much less splattering (but still happens). I'm thinking more coffee and/or a heavier tamp is what should reduce splattering even more.

Some of my coffees are good at this dose, but some I still prefer underdosed. I guess I'll just have to do what works best for each coffee.

Just to keep documenting my progress I tried:
-11g, tad coarser grind, used WDT needle to pile up grinds into center in a cone shape, nutating motion then finished with a medium tamp...pretty good results (low splatter, no pinholes, but slightly uneven) but I think it probably only works best with certain grinders (or maybe only heavily overdosed). This was taking grinds straight from the doser on the Super Jolly.
-11g, grind a bit finer, slight WDT, good number of taps against counter, no tamp....unfortunately this produced pockets where the coffee didn't extract at all.
-11g, same grind, ran coffee through a sieve, shook sideways to distribute, light tamp....this one produced a side channel (probably from the sideways distribution).

The only near perfect shot I've had so far has been something like I posted in the last post. Unfortunately reproducing it reliably isn't something I'm capable of yet.

I have a decent tamper, but it doesn't perfectly fit the 49mm basket. I'm thinking of getting a perfect fitting one from OrphanEspresso along with maybe an elektra basket to play with. To avoid this purchase I was really hoping the no-tamp shot would have been at least promising. Damn this hobby!

Well I decided to completely redial in my grinder and start at what I call a normale on my machine. Basically it works out to be a full lever pull just starting to blonde. I had realized that my current habits had drifted to a ristretto setting as what I was calling normal, so I backed off the grind quite a bit coarser and started over.

Also after thinking about things all day I realized I may have been getting side channeling because of my "yogurt" cup (which is actually a small drinking cup) being cut too small. In other words, when I pulled it off the basket there was always a ring of coffee, which I then used the needle to cover up. Cutting the cup shorter has now fixed this, and combined with schomer NSEW tamp and nutating motion (probably not all necessary but I really wanted to make sure the edge is sealed up) I'm getting great shots again.

I settled on a 10.5g dose in the double basket, and kept my distribution technique constant to redial in everything. I finally feel like I'm back to where I was pre-bottomless, and probably even further. I'm still thinking of getting the larger basket just to have options. Maybe even 2 so I can prepare a couple of shots at once and swap them out pretty quick. The biggest downside to the 49mm group to me is how rare baskets are, each one is $40 new.

I've only just started trying my naked PF with the Europiccola again after abandoning it some time ago. One nice thing about it is that it allows you to used the much deeper Elektra MCAL double basket which holds more coffee. It seems you like single baskets? You could try an Elektra one. The Elektra baskets are a whole lot cheaper than the Pavoni ones.

Yeah, I think I'm going to try a couple.

Donut extractions are popping up more now. Makes me wonder if I've always had them as they seem WDT independent. I'm only noticing now with a looser grind because drops show up at the edges during preinfusion. A pretty extreme nutating motion seems to help, but I haven't found something as repeatable as I'd like yet. Makes me look toward a new tamper again.