Reed spacer question.

Take that goofy thing off of there regardless of it's making it hard to start. That for a quad rider with extra beer money to buy

May want to make sure the reeds are closing. That reed cage wouldn't have anything to do with a hard start unless it was sucking air. I just had a bike it was a pain in the ass to start and the intake boot was not Sealing to the Reed cage.

78 YZ250 was a bit hard to start new. Kick it like a 125, lots of fast ,deliberate kicks. I believe the reed spacers actually reduce peak HP numbers slightly. Shifts the torque peak down a bit in the RPM range.

Tried one on my 79 YZ250, Not for long. Get rid of it.

I've already went through this problem on my '79 YZ250 and even though the engine had good compression and made good power, it was hard to start.
Remove the top-end and remove the ring from the piston. Place the ring inside the cylinder and check the end gap. Regardless of the compression reading you have obtained, if the ring gap is to large and not within spec, change it out with a new one.
Hard starting on a 2-stroke is attributed to large ring end-gap. Here's the deal, in order for the piston to draw "vacuum" to pull fuel from the carb to the chamber, the ring gap must be within tolerance or there will be a lack of sufficient vacuum to do it's job. The bigger the gap, the less of a vacuum, the harder it is to start because of too little air/fuel that enters the combustion chamber.