How much advance did he put into it? Try about 6 degrees to start.
If you know that the timing is right, try backing off the timing a few degrees. If it still pings, try it without the vacuum advance hooked up. If it still pings, try racing fuel from the drag strip. It won't ping. Run super-unleaded or put in some low compression pistons. If it didn't ping with the vacuum advance unhooked, try hooking the vacuum canister to the vacuum that is high at idle (called manifold vacuum). with our bad gas, and high compression, you want the extra advance for idle and want it to retard when under load. (The factory had it hooked to PORTED vacuum, but we are stuck hooking it up to MANIFOLD vacuum. In your picture, if you don't have a smaller fitting for manifold vacuum, you'll have to get some kind of adapter to neck that plugged big one down to a smaller fitting for the smaller hose.
Rob