Once you pin the front drive belt, I'm not a big fan of mixing pads since the slipper doesn't slip independently F/R anymore.

I would use the same pads across the slipper with the pin modification (no matter if you were using the basket or not). Once you get it adjusted properly, I'd expect the forward bite to be the same no matter which one you choose. IMO only difference between them is going to be how long they last before you have to do maintenance on them.

If users are going to leave the slipper decoupled, I'm certain everyone will find some magic cocktail of slipper pads that work best for them (we have a couple hundred pages of just that in this thread).