the recommended brace heights are merely ballpark figures in my opinion. I shoot with one of bob lees sponsored shooters. He has two world championship buckles. He is constantly changing his brace height, according to what he sees his arrow doing. While given most of the guys i shoot with shoot recurves, most of us run ours 7 3/4 to 8 1/4. However when shooting a new string, it is not uncommon for the string to stretch and our brace heights to slip down around 7, without us noticing a differnce in arrow flight. I feel the biggest difference in hand shock.