TotallyRC, i owe you.
I was going to check the board and go home, but had to go check out my wiring before i left. My "master" (me being the apprentice) wire the analog signal backwards.
The big "chug" was the motion controller trying to hold position and actually accelerating away from it. I didnt have time to tune any PID to any level of accuracy, but generally anything over P 3 was noisy. The motion with P: 3 and D: 75 was ok, but ill have to come back in a couple weeks and tune it up for real. I guess in my application the gain scaling isnt a factor.
Appreciate your help.