Update on my car, as mentioned above I could only recreate tramping in 1st gear (if at all), and never in 2nd gear.
I now have new tyres on the front, vredesteins, and increased bhp thanks to a dtuk box. On some testing today I was getting tramping in 1st gear if flooring it, but I could not replicate any tramping in second gear. This was on damp roads also.
I am thinking there must be another factor at play here. If Fred, you can replicate tramping reliably in 2nd gear, and I can't even with 240bhp going through the front tyres, something doesn't add up!
So, just a thought, but could the missing factor be wheel balance?
If you google causes for wheel tramping the most common reason is unbalanced wheels. Could the big variances we are all seeing in the behavior actually be as simple as some suspect quality control on wheel balancing at the VW factory? It could even be some bad batches of glue and a few weights dropping off on the journey over... who knows. Or, perhaps the Bridgestones have even more weight variance than some of the other brands, making them even more sensitive to being properly balanced.