JDL,
The Bear Patriot is a very nice bow. I had one for several years and was very happy with it. Mine was also #50. I draw a little over 28 so I shot 2018 arrows with 150 grain tips. It also shot .500 spine carbons well with 200 grain points. Initially my bow was noisy too. I believe that most of it had to do with the factory string. I had a flemish string twisted up using D97 and that helped a lot. I do not remember the exact brace height, but I think it was around 7.5 I put a rubber "Sure Grip" on it. I thought the grip on that bow was great. I did experiment with different silencers on the bow, but settled on beaver balls located at about 12 to 14 inches from the limb tips. That made my very quiet. Just a very small thump at release. Overall, I liked the bow, but sold it to finance an ILF rig. I did spend a lot of time tuning and adjusting on the Patriot to get it to shoot the way I wanted. Please feel free to pm me if I can help. Good luck!