Any positives/negative experiences with some of the higher power HEI coils on the market?
Accel, MSD, Mallory, Moroso, Hypertech, Pertronix, sure there's others out there.
Specifically, the dual plug/post units for 90's ish V8s... trying to optimize my tow rig before the season starts.
I tried an Accel one years ago. It failed in 6 months. Saw no difference vs. a stock coil.
Most should work for you, but if you aren't having any ignition problems, you most likely won't notice any difference. At least any of the brands you listed are probably better than the part store replacement ones.
I put Accel coils on a 03 Mustang GT I had when the stock ones started failling, worked well for me with no problems.
I'm mainly feeding my need to continuously make improvements ;-) Air intake is updated, fuel is updated, exhaust is updated, spark is next 
The Davis Unified Ignition coil (DUI Coil) is the most popular unit in the dirt roundy round racing class I run in. We have to run HEI distributors, and you rarely see a car with anything else on it. I've run the same one for two years now, after buying it used on ebay, and had no troubles at all.
On the DIYAutoTune Nova, we were able to measure that the spark was hotter with an MSD coil than a stock one using an oscilloscope, but couldn't see any power gain on the dyno. It just didn't need any more spark in the way the engine was set up.
Not an HEI, but we once were dyno testing a Porsche 944 and suspected spark issues. The car's owner ran up to Autozone and grabbed an Accel Super Stock coil, swapped out the 20 year old Bosch part... and lost 5 hp.
My dad reports MSD good, Accel bad.
I know MSD parts fail, too, and have seen coils fail in short order.
It all depends on the product line as to where it was made (country of origin) as even with MSDs portfolio, quality can differ dramatically.
My advice is find someone who has firsthand knowledge of the part number you're considering. It sounds like you have a solid vote for DUI above. I suspect many drag racers use MSD with success in a standard HEI type configuration - they likely won't ruin a bread and butter product like that.
We used the old Jacob's units on several TBI GM's years ago. With them, you had to open the spark gap from .035 to .070. They were a really good setup, with Multiple spark discharge below 4000rpm's, which was perfect for the torque monster TBI's.
MadScientistMatt wrote: The car's owner ran up to Autozone and grabbed an Accel Super Stock coil, swapped out the 20 year old Bosch part... and lost 5 hp.
I've heard/read that many times over the years. Think even GRMS showed that once years ago in some ignition study they did.
"I was told"..... I'd need a high resistance HD, or "race" wire with these because otherwise they would produce an aura......
I'm running Magnacor 8.5mm wires...
that if memory serves has a resistance level of 2K ohms per foot - (did memory fail me?)
1.5k to 2k ohms per foot is carbon string type ignition wire. Spiral wound wire is something more like 350 ohms per foot. There doesn't seem to be a lot of difference in actual performance, there's a lot of magazine tests out there. That said, I'm hunting an engine miss on my Mustang and bought Taylor spiral wound wires per many forum posts of good experience with them, and retiring the set of MSD wires on the car now.
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