Matt,

Dwayne Beck uses a bit of row cleaning in somewhat similar conditions. One benefit of using a row cleaner is avoiding hairpinning a lot of that massive residue cover in the seed slot.

I agree that in the original poster's Australian conditions he probably does NOT want the 8 or 10" wide cleared strip we are looking for in much of the US corn belt.  Frankly that is not hardly possible in that heavy vetch, as I described above.

I will stand by my point that a small amount of row cleaning would very likely improve the OP's corn stand, if all else is equal. With our 1572 combo he could raise the row cleaners to achieve the desired result of more uniform seed depth and minimal hairpinning without a big wide black strip being left.  We do it all the time (although without the cutting coulter needed for vetch) especially in 2nd crop beans into wheat in E KS.

Jim at Dawn