DX9 is a good point, and would be a solution, but it feels like I'm compromising and making allowances where I shouldn't have to, working around a fixable issue where I shouldn't have to.
To be honest, the AH FFB while fine, is pretty limited, there's only 5 sliders you can adjust, and as you have to set your stick to directx mode so AH can output forces, you miss out on all the extra tweaking you can do in software for say MSFS or DCS, so I'll just swap sticks when I play the other sims, the monstertech mounts make that pretty easy, just 2 bolts to remove the stick on it's baseplate and swap the other one in.