A neighbor asked me to post this question.  He is running John Deere corn head (894???) on a 9610 machine.  The head does not do good job of pulling the stalks through.  It leaves the stalks long and leaning in the direction of travel.  He is rebuilding the head and will replace the snapper rolls.  He wants to know which roll works better, the tapered roll or the straight roll.

I have not run a John Deere head.  We have run C-IH and Massy heads.  I think his problem is a combination of worn snapper rolls and running the head to slow.  We are in a area where corn is field dried.  He says he looses too much grain at the deck plates if he speeds the head up.  He said speeding the head up did not help the problem.  He wants to hear experience from John Deere operators.