Hi Dan
When you have polar aligned your DEC to give a slight drift you may find that your guiding will be better. Personally, I do not pay much attention to balance in DEC but try to get the RA balance reasonable. A couple of points:
I notice that you have an EQ6 mount which can take a good load but apparently you have an 8 in dob mounted on it plus other accessories?
I have found that the manufacturer's guide to mount loading is always a bit optimistic. I have a EQ5 mount which when fully loaded did not guide so well. When I reduced the loading to about 2/3 of the manufacturer's max loading I found that guiding went much better. So check your loading.
I also find that when guiding even a slight puff of wind will cause my guiding to go off a few pixels but when the wind drops it quickly goes back to normal (using 1 second guiding). In this case a few pixels diversion in RA or DEC is not uncommon. Keeping in mind that if this does not happen very often during say a 4 minute image then the stars are only put off for a very short proportion of this imaging time and I usually cannot detect any problem in the image display. If wind gusts occur too frequently I usually give up guiding for the night.
It is hard to reach perfection in this imaging and guiding business so don't
be too concerned if your guiding is pushed off a few pixels occasionally.
Don't worry - be happy!
Cheers Peter